You don’t—no more than you need a realtor to find a home, a decorator to design your living room or a CPA to do your taxes. Parents certainly find their own children’s names just as they decorate their own homes or fill out their own tax forms. But a specialist can help make sense of all the options.

Like a realtor or interior designer, for examples, a baby-name consultant searches for choices that meet your criteria, steering clear of styles that don’t interest you and leading you to options you may overlook. In the end, only YOU select the name you want. But with the reassuring expertise of a consultant who tackles naming professionally, specializes in difficult naming challenges and is passionate about the "language" of names, your search will be more fruitful—and enjoyable!

Gone are the days when the same 20-30 names were used by a majority of parents. With TV, the internet and social media, we regularly hear names from all over the world. Parents-to-be contact My Name for Life to help make sense of all the new choices. Some are struggling to honor blended ancestries or to reconcile their own divergent tastes. Some need help choosing names for success in the English-speaking world. Some just want a partner in the baby-naming adventure. Don’t be afraid to ask for help or just for a companion in your search. It’s fun!

Founder Sherri Suzanne is guided by a strong philosophy: To uncover a distinctive name that carries positive influences from childhood to adulthood. Such a name imparts warm, attractive, strong qualities; looks handsome on paper; and sounds beautiful when spoken. We select names that are pronounced easily and spelled intuitively in English—whether they be traditional or creative names and regardless of the language of origin. The latter is important, since we discover names of beauty, grace and strength in all languages. While My Name for Life works with parents around the globe, we specialize in names that can be written using the English alphabet with sounds that are favorable to the English-speaking ear, subjective as that may be. 

Name consultations start by learning your style preferences to identify the sphere of names that would please you most. Then we listen to your goals (perhaps you wish to honor a deceased relative) and to your limitations—be they religious, cultural or family traditions. Then we apply our own experience in terms of matching compatible sounds and rhythms.

For decades, My Name for Life has been compiling a database of both unusual and traditional names that is still growing. It includes a collection of beautiful sounds, syllables, prefixes and suffixes that come in handy when a little creativity is required. However, our database is just one source of the names suggested to clients. Others come from our research library—history, literature, geography, art, religion, pop culture—and a little imagination. We have acquired contacts with expertise in various areas of language and culture that enjoy helping us with special dilemmas.

We enjoy testing names we love: They are handwritten and typed, spoken and repeated, called and announced, and researched to eliminate obvious negative associations.

My Name for Life’s Guided Name Selection Service is a step-by-step, proven system that allows for maximum creativity with measurable progress toward finding a name. It involves a "discovery" process, name search and formal presentation of names, followed by selection techniques developed and perfected over the years by Sherri Suzanne. Names are chosen based on style preferences, parameters and name challenges that parents communicate via personal telephone interview or via email questionnaire.

PERSONAL TELEPHONE INTERVIEW: Personal consultations are generally done over the telephone (about an hour). The interview is used to elicit your name preferences. The conversation is an opportunity for a parent-to-be or other nameseeker to express likes and dislikes about names as well as any anxiety about naming.

CUSTOM EMAIL QUESTIONNAIRE: Some parents, especially those outside the U.S., find email a more convenient way to express their baby naming parameters. Our multi-page copyrighted questionnaire is customized to your circumstances. It’s been perfected over years of consultations with discerning parents.

GIFT CERTIFICATES: Gift Certificates are available. They make a memorable and unique baby shower gift for the recipient and the giver. We enjoy sharing our expertise with parents-to-be who wouldn't otherwise know of our services. Please visit our Gift Certificates page for more information.

My Name for Life provides hand-selected names or name pairs thoughtfully considered to match criteria provided by you. No machine-generated selections. No random alphabetical lists plucked from a book. The style and criteria you provide may result in a handful of suggestions up to two dozen or more. Unless you request otherwise, suggestions for complete name pairs are generally provided (first and middle names). 

MyNameforLife.com will provide you with a beautiful selection of names, but the name you ultimately use is your choice, of course. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that you will like the name suggestions provided. What you have is our promise that we will search for and present to you the best suggestions known to us. We pledge our devotion to your child's name and our best effort at all times. Our proprietary techniques are designed to empower you to make the best choice for your family with confidence. We are proud of our perfect record of customer service.

We do not disclose the identities of anyone seeking the assistance of MyNameforLife.com. The data we collect is used only to fulfill your request for name suggestions. Contact information is used in correspondence between MyNameforLife.com and clients only. Note that data required for payment is collected by our payment partner, Paypal, under its completely secure system. Please read Paypal’s policies for information on how your privacy is protected.