Marcè Ayala and Kylie McAdam’s baby isn’t due until December, but the couple already has everything ready for her arrival: a crib, onesies galore, a nursery and, of course, a Gmail address.
And though she won’t need it for some time, Ayala scooped up a coveted “firstnamelastname”@gmail.com address for their daughter, Elianna, as soon as the couple learned they were having a girl.
The father-to-be didn’t want to take any chances that his offspring would be inconvenienced in adulthood. “We’re starting a family,” the 28-year-old music producer says. “It makes sense to create an e-mail address now so she has it later and it’s hers.”
Ayala and McAdam aren’t alone in staking out online claims for offspring before they’re out of diapers. When Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis had their daughter, Wyatt, in 2014, they made sure their little celeb spawn had her online life in order.
“We immediately went home [from the hospital] and…we reserved all the domain names,” Kutcher, an investor in various startups — including Airbnb, Spotify and Casper mattresses — told Conan O’Brien on “The Tonight Show.” “We got the Twitter handle, the Instagram — everything that you could possibly have.”
He even made sure to get a URL with the kid’s name. “I don’t want a porn site with my daughter’s name,” Kutcher joked. “It’s unacceptable to me and it’s not gonna happen!”
Jokes aside, experts say claiming an e-mail and URL for a baby before she’s uttered her first word isn’t as ridiculous as it might seem at first click.
“Let’s say your child ends up becoming a vice president for a Fortune 500 company,” says Ted Jenkin, co-CEO of oXYGen Financial Inc., a financial advisory firm geared toward Gen X and Y clients. “[If] someone reroutes their name to a pornographic site or some site that would not fit with their views on life — that can be problematic.”
I don’t want a porn site with my daughter’s name. It’s unacceptable to me and it’s not gonna happen!
- Ashton Kutcher
Even if a child is no longer in utero or infancy, it’s not too late to start planning for their future social media needs.
Westchester couple Michael and Karla recently secured a Gmail address for their 2-year-old daughter Noelle. Like many parents, Michael didn’t want his child to face the same hardships he has.
“When I opened a Gmail account a few years ago, I thought I would be able to use my name, since it’s not very common,” says Michael, who declined to give his last name for privacy reasons.
“I was surprised when it took a few tries to find a variation that wasn’t already in use,” he says. “Going through that made me realize that e-mail addresses will just be harder to get as time goes on.”
For parents concerned about giving their kids Web-friendly names, there’s even a handy tool: awesomebabyname.com, a tongue-in-cheek URL generator that doles out baby-name suggestions based on URL availability.
Since its launch last year, it has attracted nearly half a million users.
This is what modern life has come to, says Amy Oztan, a mommy blogger who secured e-mails and URLs for her two childen when they were just in elementary school.
“I don’t know anybody who will admit to choosing a name based on the availability of a URL or Gmail address,” she says. “But I have absolutely no doubt that it happens.”