namemydaughter.com; iStockYeah, this seems like a good idea.
Stephen McClaughlin has a daughter on the way and has asked the Internet to name her. He explains on the creatively named site NameMyDaughter.com, "To the disbelief of my wife, I have decided to let the internet name* my daughter."
He says there is an asterisk because he "knows better than to trust you" and he and his wife will choose the final name. "Alas my daughter shall not be named WackyTaco692," he continues. "Sorry guys the wife wouldn't go for a free for all."
(Oh and if you're wondering, Stephen says, "I am not crazy, I have been tested!")
And for a brief minute, the Internet selected the lovely name Amelia Mae McLaughlin.
Then, like all things put to a vote on the Internet, it went to hell. The name in first place at the moment? Cthulhu All-Spark McLaughlin (Cthulhu is a "monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet and long narrow wings " from a 1928 short story by H.P. Lovecraft. All-Spark is something from Transformers).
Amelia is still at No. 2. The top 10 includes names like Charlotte and Olivia, along with:
3. Megatron
6. Zelda
8. Not Zelda
10. Streetlamp
The rest range from Alice and Ellie to Swag (No. 19) and Pancake (No. 21), Nora and Emma to Unicorn (No. 36) and Twilight (No. 47). There's Spider-Man (No. 57), Playstation (No. 74), Vladimir (No. 75) Honey Boo Boo (No. 109) and, our personal favorite, ! at No. 40. Hey, ! is open for interpretation.
Then again, maybe Playstation and Pancake aren't so crazy. Someone named their baby Pepsi.
And although, at the time of publishing, Cthulhu was still on the leader board, Stephen updated the blog to explain, "1700 votes for CTHULHU with no IP address, I think someone found a loop hole, Oh well closed that."
Otherwise, the only names he's removed are "several STIs and a couple of sexual positions."
So how did the daddy-to-be convince his wife to turn to the World Wide Web? He says:
"I was sitting on the end of the bed after coming home from work and the idea hit me. I tend to be very forward person (this gets me in a lot of trouble lol) and I just blurted it out - 'Hunny, I am going to ask the internet what we should name our daughter!'
"She was supportive right from the start. I think at first she didn't think I was actually going to do it. But once the domain was registered she knew it was real," he continues. "Hell when I saw that namemydaughter.com was available I just knew that was the sign that I HAD to do it."
We'll have to wait till April 2 (the due date) to see what they end up naming Baby Cthully.