This Baby-Name App Lets Grandma Cast a Vote

Areumjit (아름짓), a new Korean iPhone app, turns a shortlist of baby names into a family ballot. Parents choose candidates using its birth-based naming tools, then send relatives a link. The people voting do not need to install the app.

The developer's screenshots offer a good reason to keep the process going after the calculations. Three candidates, Minji, Mingyeong and Rin-a, all score 100. The first two comparison cards show full bars for every scoring criterion, too. These are scores under the app's naming rules; within that example, they leave the family with a three-way tie.

The shortlist can begin before the baby is born. Areumjit accepts a due date, uses it to calculate the five elements in saju, Korea's Four Pillars tradition, and recommends Hanja characters it considers a fit. A birth time can be added later. Parents can fix a family generation character in either position and exclude characters they dislike or names that match their own. Those preferences determine which suggestions reach the comparison screen.

A name's sound does not settle its spelling. In another official screenshot, entering Seo-yun in Hangul produces several combinations of Hanja, the Chinese characters used in Korean names. The first character can be 瑞, 序 or 舒, with different meanings and different scores. A separate detail view puts the chosen characters beside their meanings and romanization, followed by the scoring breakdown. The app is helping choose the written name as well as what people will call the child.

Saving at least two candidates enables the voting link. The recipient's page drops the detailed scoring bars and keeps the names, characters, meanings and vote counts. A field asks who is voting, with “grandmother” as its example, and the instructions say a vote can be changed by tapping again. In the sample ballot, Minji has three votes; the other two have one apiece. The app's perfect scores have finally given way to a preference.