TikTok’s Baby-Naming Experts Have Suggestions for Justin and Hailey Bieber
Will it be Win Bieber? Prince Bieber? Zurich Rhode Bieber? We asked the internet’s leading baby-naming consultants to place their bets.
When Colleen Slagen, a TikToker and professional baby namer, heard the news that Justin and Hailey Bieber were expecting their first child last week, two things sprung to mind: to post about it, then to think, Do they need a baby-name consultant? she told me, half-joking.
While the couple supposedly already have a name picked out, professionals like Slagen could not help themselves from getting into the mix. Baby naming has become a cottage industry online as a handful of TikTok creators have racked up millions of views and built burgeoning businesses. (They’ve had a busy week: On top of the Bieber news, the Social Security Administration has also just released the list of the most popular baby names for boys and girls in 2023, with Liam and Olivia topping the charts.) Services can cost parents anywhere from $30 to $30,000, depending on the consultant and how bespoke they want the name to be. For celebrities, a baby name can be a branding opportunity. Unique ones make headline news and will often set trends us plebeians follow.
I spoke to four of the internet’s most sought-after baby-naming experts, who offered their top picks and lifted the veil behind how they come up with them. The suggestions were all distinctive — some truly far out that only a hot famous person could uphold — but there were also a few naming patterns that kept coming up. One of them was the name, or variations of the name, “Win” or “Wyn,” a derivative of Hailey’s maiden name Baldwin, which in Old English and German translates to “brave friend.”
They insisted that the practice is serious and sacred. “The journey of baby naming asks parents to connect with the spirit and personality of their baby in order to choose a name that will serve them throughout their lives,” said one. “In connecting with their baby, they are also connecting with that vulnerable, infantile part of themselves.”
Alas, meet the internet’s most devoted baby-naming professionals and their top picks for the baby, baby, baby (oh).
“For a girl I would consider something ultrafeminine and powerful sounding like Venus,” says Steph Coffield, 40, a full-time baby-naming consultant and content creator based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Coffield says she has named over 800 babies and charges $700 for three months of unlimited video, phone, and email access to her. (Her most basic services, which she described as a “short email of name questions, suggestions, and opinions,” start at $30.) “Venus Rhode Bieber has a spectacular ring to it. It could double as a brand name one day.”
“Justin and Hailey seem to have a clean but vintage-inspired style, and when I think of boy names for them I picture short one-syllable options like Dean, Ike, and Jones. Those names are a bit too popular so my top suggestion would be the Greek name Zale, and my wild card suggestion would be Stone.”
“I can also picture them going with something old-money inspired that’s uncommon and gender neutral like Selwyn or Sinclair.”
“Justin has a funky, goofy, casual sense of style. His outfits tend to be a little eccentric — sometimes bordering on ‘inappropriate’ for the specific gathering — but very authentic, playful, and bold, nonetheless,” says Taylor Humphreys, a 36-year-old doula, baby-name consultant, and reiki healer from San Francisco. “I could see Justin gravitating toward bubbly and zippy nicknames-as-first-names such as Bob, Zen, Sol, or Pax.”
“Hailey may feel more drawn to posh-sounding one-syllable names like Jacques (the french version of Jack), Stone/Roche, Wolf, Peace, Brave, or Win. Baldwin actually means ‘Brave Friend,’ so I could see her wanting to play with that by going with a name like Brave or shortening the name to Win.”
“But it’s always possible that these two will go with a quirky, ironic name like “Baby.”
“Ciel is a beautiful name that means sky, which could be a reference to heaven,” Boston-based Colleen Slagen, 34, suggested for the Christian couple. “It’s short and delicate sounding, which is very on trend and adds balance to their harsher-sounding last name.” Slagen has only been in business full time for about a year and has already racked up over 200 clients, she told me. Her price ranges from $250 to $400.
Other girl names she theorized for the Biebers included Marseilles — “Hailey’s mom’s name is Kennya. I could definitely see them using a place name and Marseilles feels very chic.” And Fox, which “for a girl would be unexpected, and they are definitely going for unexpected. It has a crisp, edgy sound and is on trend with other nature/animal-inspired names being used. Hailey’s grandfather’s middle name was Rae; I could definitely see Foxi Rae as a name for them.”
For a boy, Slagen threw out another location — “Zurich Rhode (Hailey’s middle name) has the sound of a celebrity baby name” — or a music-inspired name like Prince, Zepp, or Mercury.
“My top girl pick is Zipporah — it’s biblical and bold, which is how I feel the couple may approach naming BB Biebs.” says Sonya Prior, a 32-year-old baby-naming consultant based in Auckland, New Zealand. “Zipporah is Moses’s wife; she’s romantic, dynamic, she’s all the things. She’s also never charted in the SSA to data, so if they’re looking for something outside the data, she’s my pick.”
“Winn is my pick for a gender-neutral option. Now I may be biased, as I am mum to a boy named Wynn, but I’m thinking of Hailey naming her line Rhode in honor of her mum. Looking at her maiden name, Baldwin, I think Winn (an added ‘n’ just to set it apart) could be a sweet tie to her family.” For a boy, she’s thinking one syllable … and Scandi: “Mads has never charted in the U.S. either, but it’s very familiar in Scandinavian countries and I love the link to Mary (Madonna).”
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