We’re One!

Today’s our birthday! Last April 17th, we published our first Ava to Zeke post. A year ago, we couldn’t have imagined where we are now (writing this post while quarantined in our homes, for one). In our year of life, we’ve grown up a lot, but we’re still toddling around with lots to learn. On this extra special day, we wanted to take some time to share a little more about us and to say thank you for sticking around.

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Where We’ve Been

We’ve had so much fun this year, sharing our thoughts about baby naming and our themed lists of names. We started Ava to Zeke after years of chatting with each other about baby names. Lynda’s a writer with loads of experience naming characters and Star is a scholar who studies names. We both have young kids. So before starting the blog, we’d spent years visiting other name sites for fun, for research, and for inspiration naming our own kids. We knew “the market” well, and we launched the blog when we felt like we had something to contribute.

There are so many wonderful baby name resources out there, and we wanted to add our own voice. For us, that meant contributing a curated approach to naming. Industries from fashion to food have tastemakers that offer a specific point of view to their content. Following this lead, we put our point of view out there, adopting the attitude that opinions–not just facts–are meaningful when deciding on a baby name. You can see this in our “Best of” name lists. For these lists, we select 10-20 of our favorite names, rather than an exhaustive list of names that fit the theme. We talk about what appeals to us about the name, whether it’s sound, associations, or style. Our curated approach also comes through in our advice posts that offer our own takes on topics like choosing a name, understanding trends, dealing with regret, or finding other online baby-name resources.

We’ve also worked to balance our own point of view with larger trends. Part of trend watching is looking at the data, another is reading A LOT on other baby naming sites, blogs, and social media, being present on naming forums, and listening closely to what expectant parents are telling us they want in a baby name. And it’s also about looking to different fields, like art and design, to see what people are loving and what they will be loving next year and the year after. Style is style and it’s all connected like that.

Another goal for Ava to Zeke from the beginning has been inclusivity. Modern parents are increasingly looking for non-binary names for their babies, and names that have been traditionally gendered are becoming less so. So rather than having gender-specific lists or lists for unisex names, we do all our lists by theme, with traditionally female names and traditionally male names all jumbled up together with names that also read as gender neutral.

We also seek to feature names that are crosscultural and diverse. Much of the language used to describe baby names, like “classic” or “traditional,” ties them to classed and raced histories. The more we can break away from that and make way for the new, the better. It’s always a struggle when spotlighting names outside our own cultural and ethnic backgrounds, but we’ll keep working at it in 2020.

In the year that we’ve been at it, we’ve picked up more readers along the way than we imagined. And for that, we’re grateful!

For those who are new-ish, a little intro to the structure of the blog: Our posts fall into several categories, which you can access from our Archives page. Our Name Lists, Name Spotlight, and Name vs. Name categories are where we feature baby names. The Name Advice, Names in Fiction, and Ask Ava to Zeke categories give our personal tips for naming. In Talking Points and Name News, we discuss current events related to naming, or share other random musings of the moment. And Curation & Inspiration is where we share our sources of inspiration with you. In the next year, we’ll be working on another way to organize our content, so check back for a new, improved blog experience. 🙂

Where We’re Going

We definitely have some goals for ourselves in the next year, but we mostly want to hear from you. If you’re a seasoned blogger, enlighten us, please! If you’re a regular reader, tell us what’s working and what isn’t. What do you want to see more of as we begin year two? You can stay connected as we keep this journey going by subscribing to the blog and following us on social.

Thanks again for supporting this lil blog. We’re so happy to have a community of name lovers who gather here. And we appreciate all the other name sites and blogs that inspire us daily. One year down, many more to go…

❤️, Star and Lynda