Stuck for Name for New Child? Help’s on Way

You are expecting a baby. “Let’s name him after my father,” you suggest. “Let’s call him Dad.”

“Let’s get serious,” your spouse advises.

You check out books of baby names. You slog through pages of obscure names, trendy names, their derivations, their origins. After hours of proposing and trashing names, you agree only that you will not saddle your offspring with the likes of Griselda or Edsel.

Enter Sue Butner, 25, a bank employee from La Verne.

For $20, she will name your child for you.

Perhaps it was inevitable that some enterprising soul would seek profit in the traditionally personal task of naming a baby. After all, this is an era in which people are willing to pay strangers to sire their offspring or carry babies to term.

Three months ago, Butner rented a post office box for her budding cottage industry, “Sue’s Names,” and took out an advertisement in the “Wet Set Gazette,” a newsletter published by Dy-Dee Diaper Service.

“Creative, Personalized, Convenient,” her ad reads. “Ten years naming experience! Break the mold and let me choose a name that best suits you and your personality.”

More than a dozen couples already have paid for her advice, she said.

“You wouldn’t believe the people who have come to me, looking for help,” said the upbeat, baby-faced Butner, who is not married and has no children. “The husband wants one name; the wife wants another. They’ve looked at 10,000 names and they’re sick of reading name books. They want somebody to say, ‘Here are some good choices.’ ”

Butner has them fill out a questionnaire to learn what kinds of names might appeal to them: what are their religious faiths, do they favor things traditional or nouveau, how do they make their living?

“If dad is Mr. Macho,” Butner pointed out, “he’s not going to want his son named Leslie.”

For their money, her clients get a list of about 50 suggested names replete with nicknames and middle names. There have been no dissatisfied customers, she said.

There was, for example, the waitress and the computer engineer who were expecting a baby boy. He wanted Derrick. She wanted Griffin. They settled on Trevor.

There was the preschool teacher and the deliveryman who had a little girl, Brittany Nichol. They wanted the same initials, B. N., for their second child, which is due in a few months. Butner gave them Brennan Nash and Brianna Noel.

Butner discovered her knack for names as a child playing Scrabble. Instead of using regular words, she used proper names, sprinkling in extra vowels, changing occasional consonants just to make things interesting.

She was convinced that her own name, Susan Michele, was hopelessly boring, and went by Kaylie Breanne for a time. All the while, she said, friends, relatives and strangers sought her advice on what to name their babies.

She offered them alternatives to archaic names sure to cause kids ribbing in later life. She suggested unusual spellings for parents bent on giving their children particularly common names. She warned them when the initials of the names they favored formed such words as RAT.

Then it occurred to her: “There must be other people out there having trouble with finding good names.” And not only babies’ names.

Butner plans to assist novelists, screenwriters and actors. She already has helped a writer friend come up with a fitting name for the dark, evil protagonist of an unpublished novel--Butner dubbed the villain “Dayne”--and has helped an actress friend, Cheryl Forbes, develop a stage name--Kaddie Morghan.

“Cheryl plays a sort of dumb blonde and she wanted something kind of cute,” Butner explained. “She wanted it so that both names could be first or last names. I charged her the regular $20.”

Naming babies, however, remains the focus of Butner’s entrepreneurial interests.

She hopes one day to publish her own book of names and to have her own child. She won’t reveal what name she would give the baby.

That, she said, is personal.