San Francisco has always been a place where ridiculous ideas get turned into businesses. Tech guys make apps to deliver room temperature tap water to your doorstep, venture capitalists throw millions at “Uber for ferrets,” and now you can pay someone thirty grand to tell you your kid’s name should be Lily.
That someone is Taylor A. Humphrey, the Bay Area’s resident luxury baby-naming consultant. Yes, that’s an actual job. She’s built a career and a TikTok following by helping rich parents who treat naming their child like picking out marble countertops.
If you’ve got 200 bucks, she’ll email you a list of names with meanings, origins, and “vibes.” If you’ve got thirty thousand, you can unlock the VIP treatment. That includes a full-on baby name branding campaign, family history research, and months of Zoom calls where she helps you decide between Milo or Hudson.
Her clients? Tech workers who can’t make a decision without outsourcing it, celebrities naming their kids things like Aquaman or Rumble Honey, and couples on the verge of divorce over whether Priscilla is timeless or just the name of a diner waitress. One couple even called her from a hospital bed in a panic because they couldn’t agree on a middle name. She swooped in with “Lily” and saved them from a six-figure hospital bill.
To be fair, Humphrey doesn’t just pick names out of thin air. She’s a trained doula, a self-proclaimed “name nerd,” and she’s got Excel spreadsheets loaded with thousands of baby names. Still, it’s wild to think people are shelling out more than a Tesla for what is basically a glorified brainstorming session.
Critics say she’s selling taste disguised as individuality. They’re not wrong. Back in the day, you just named your kid Jessica or Michael and hoped for the best. Now every name has to be unique but not weird, simple but not boring, trendy but not too trendy. That’s how you end up with kids named Buffalo Ranch Burning Man Jones.
Of course the Bay Area is the perfect place for this. It’s where people spend more time curating their baby’s Instagram reveal than fixing BART.
Humphrey admits people usually find her through videos that make fun of her. But she’s fine with it. She’s cashing in, notebook in hand, ready to help the next client choose between Valencia Mission and Poetry Circle
Because nothing screams late-stage capitalism quite like dropping thirty grand on a name your kid will probably change the second they turn eighteen.
