1. Describe the job the name must do
Choose a naming scene first, then select the name language and intended country or region separately. Interface language only changes the interface. The country changes contextual guidance, supported regional spelling and the availability of usage data; it does not certify a name as legally or culturally acceptable. “English names” is specifically an English-language scene. Other scenes let you choose a supported name language.
The collection contains 124 briefs organized into 20 categories. Several briefs intentionally share a candidate pool: a song and an album can share lyrical titles, while a novel and a film can share narrative titles. Each brief supplies a different practical check. Twin, sibling, series and paired-name scenes provide individual candidates to compare; they do not calculate a coordinated set or guarantee compatibility.
2. Separate hard constraints from preferences
The maximum length counts the complete displayed form in visible Unicode grapheme clusters, including your supplied family name, spaces, punctuation, descriptors and generation text. Required text is a contiguous, case-insensitive NFC-normalized substring. Excluded text is interpreted as individual characters, with whitespace ignored; it is not a list of whole forbidden words. ASCII-only accepts only printable ASCII characters, so accented letters, Chinese characters and a middle-dot descriptor separator cannot pass that filter.
A theme normally changes ordering, allowing different-theme alternatives. “Exact matches only” turns the selected theme into a hard constraint. Industry and naming approach affect the applicable commercial pool. Disabled controls are not submitted. Changing a brief clears the old results; Discover names runs the current brief. At most 36 matching forms are displayed, with the total and shown count stated separately. A zero-result message means the available collection has no candidate meeting the active constraints, not that no such name exists anywhere.
3. Interpret cultural transformations carefully
Personal-name scenes use curated given-name forms; commercial and creative scenes use a different collection. Chinese literary filtering applies only to the sourced Chinese personal-name collection. A supplied generation character is prepended if absent from the base; this is a construction rule, not a family genealogy check. Adding a character does not make the full new name a quotation from the original poem.
For Chinese with Taiwan or Hong Kong selected, only the curated base is converted through the project’s explicit traditional-character mapping. Your surname and added generation text are retained as entered. A reading aid describes the curated base, not your surname, new additions, every dialect or a guaranteed pronunciation. Country guidance and language profiles are starting points for a local review, not a substitute for it.
4. Read the report as evidence, not a score
Each report separates the construction, reason for selection, exact brief, market context, reading and written-form observations, usage data where available, trade-offs, evidence, practical next check and alternatives. A dictionary lookup destination is distinguished from a checked entry. An editorial association is distinguished from a literary quotation and an observed usage record. No universal quality, fortune or cultural-approval score is assigned.
The integrated French usage snapshot is a limited selection of exact spellings and years. The popularity filter is available for French personal names in France. Top 100 requires a recorded current-snapshot rank of 100 or better in at least one source sex category. Outside top 100 requires a known rank above 100, with no known top-100 rank in the selected year. Missing or null ranks are unknown and cannot prove rarity. These are category-specific ranks, not one combined national ranking. Source dates and rows are displayed in the report.
5. Reproduce these checks
Chinese example: select a baby-name scene, Chinese, Taiwan, family name 李 first, generation text 永, required text 靜姝 and a length limit of 4. The proposed form 李永靜姝 contains four visible characters. Reducing the limit to 3 excludes it. The literary interpretation belongs to the curated base 静姝, not to the newly assembled full name.
Written-form example: “Zoë Rose” has 8 visible characters, 2 words and the display initials ZR. Encoding ë as e plus a combining diaeresis still gives 8 visible characters. The generator and standalone checker use Unicode segmentation; word boundaries can depend on language and browser Unicode data. Initials use whitespace, middle dots and ampersands as separators and are a display convention, not a passport abbreviation.
Constraint example: an English brand with an ASCII-only requirement cannot include an accented character or the middle dot used by a descriptor form. Compare a root-only form instead. An empty result should lead you to change one explicit constraint and try again, rather than assume the tool silently relaxed it.
6. Calendar conventions and uncertainty
The calendar accepts valid Gregorian dates from 1901-01-01 through 2099-12-31, a local civil time to the minute, and a historical UTC offset between −12 and +14. Supply the offset that applied at the place and date, including daylight saving where relevant; the tool does not infer a time zone from the naming-country selector. Fractional offsets are accepted. It does not apply true-solar-time correction.
Year and month pillars compare the corresponding instant against solar-term boundaries on a UTC+8 calendar basis. Day and hour pillars use local civil time with lunar-javascript 1.7.7 and its Sect 2 setting. The day pillar changes at midnight; the late-Zi hour pillar follows the library’s own convention, which should not be confused with a universal agreement among traditions. The lunar-date text labels the entered local civil date.
If birth time is unknown, no hour pillar is shown. The tool checks both ends of the local day; if the day crosses a year or month solar-term boundary, the affected pillar is also withheld. The Hong Kong Observatory notes uncertainty near some distant-future lunar and solar-term boundaries. Do not treat minute-level calculations as independent astronomical verification. The tool calculates calendar conventions; it does not derive a scientifically favorable name or predict life outcomes.
7. Finish with checks outside this tool
Ask speakers from the intended community to read and write the exact proposed form. For a personal name, check the relevant registration process for the full written form and reading. For a brand, search the relevant trademark registers and domain registrar separately. Links to ICANN and WIPO do not mean a search has been performed for your candidate. A song title, fictional name or creative phrase is not automatically cleared for publication.
Use the shortlist to compare reasons and unresolved questions. Saving stores the brief in your own browser. Switching interface language temporarily stores the current naming brief in sessionStorage so it can be restored on the destination page; family names and other free text are not placed in the generated language-switch URL. If browser storage is unavailable, only the non-private preset fields can be carried in the fragment. Calendar birth inputs are not included. Corrections can be sent to the operator through the contact page.
Sources and related reading
Hong Kong Observatory · Gregorian–Lunar conversion tables