on the booklet
about the commission
We make a single object: a 48-page booklet of two hundred first names, composed for one family, by an agent with editorial oversight, then shipped a week after the intake. There is no app. There is no daily push notification. There is no community forum. The booklet is the product. The booklet is finite.
what arrives in the package
A cover with your last name in slightly archaic display type
centered, letter-spaced, quiet. inside the front cover, a half-page note signed by the agent that addresses the family by name and references one or two specifics from your intake. it is not a form letter.
Pages 3–5: what we kept thinking about
a two-hundred-word essay-paragraph naming a few patterns in your request, and a few names the agent considered and rejected and why. this is the closest the product comes to feeling like a human consultation.
Pages 6–9: a table of contents, chapter by chapter
eight to twelve chapters, with titles like names from your grandmother’s side, slightly modernized, or one-syllable names that would survive both a kindergarten and a courtroom.
Pages 10–43: the two hundred names
each in the serif face you picked at intake, with its etymology, one sentence on the kind of person who tends to grow up with it, and the names of three real (non-famous) people who carried it.
Pages 44–46: three blank pages headed “notes”
for you. the booklet’s job continues on the shelf.
Page 47: a short closing paragraph from the agent
almost always the same shape, never the same wording.
Page 48: a colophon
the typeface, the paper, the date of printing, the agent’s name.
on the wait
Most baby-name websites return results in milliseconds. The customer for this product is escaping those websites. The five-to-seven-day wait does three things. It signals craft. It gives the editorial pass room to do its real job — tone of the opening note, accuracy of the etymologies, a careful safety review. And it calibrates expectations. A customer who waited a week opens the booklet attentively. A customer who got an instant PDF skims it on their phone.
on what the agent will not do
No predictions about the child. No astrology readings. No “compatibility scores.” No names of living children of public figures. No suggestions that conflict with the exclusions you wrote in your intake. No surveys after delivery. The product is finished when it ships. The pronunciation feature uses a single neutral studio voice, never cloned from anyone.
on the reread
Optional. On the child’s 9th, 13th, and 18th birthdays, a small four-page companion arrives by mail — a single chapter about the name you chose, in light of who the child has become. Cancellable at any time. The studio commits to honoring rereads for the life of the studio and to keeping every digital edition live indefinitely.