It's a match !

How I Built a Tinder for Baby Names to End a Debate

 My wife is pregnant, which is amazing. What’s less amazing is discovering that you and the person you love have wildly different opinions on what constitutes a good name for a tiny human. Our conversations went in circles. So, my engineer's brain defaulted to its usual setting: stop talking about the problem and start building a system to solve it.

Phase 1: The Data Problem

 My first thought was, I just need all the possible names in one place. I went on a digital scavenger hunt, scraping thousands of Arabic names from all over the internet. The data was a chaotic mess. Many entries were missing meanings or origins. I ended up feeding the entire list to an AI and tasked it with filling in the blanks. The results were amazing. I now possessed a formidable database of over 6,500 names. The AI did in five minutes what would have taken me weeks of mind-numbing research. God bless having AI interns!

Phase 2: The Failed Interface

 My first attempt to use this data was a simple directory on a Google Site*. I built it a couple months ago, it was functional, and when I shared it in some Facebook groups, it got a decent amount of traffic. But when I presented it to my primary user (my wife), she gave it a polite nod and immediately went back to her phone. The tool was technically useful, but it didn't solve the core problem of making a *joint* decision fun. It was just a boring list.

*The Google Sites SEO Problem: Embedding custom code like a directory on Google Sites can be bad for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Search engines have a hard time "reading" content that's inside an embed, making the tool essentially invisible to Google search and limiting how many people can find it organically.

Phase 3: The Gamification System

 I realized the problem wasn't the data, it was the dynamic. I needed a system that could bypass my wife's seemingly automatic "veto" power over any name that came out of my mouth, even the ones I knew she secretly liked, haha. The solution had to feel like a game, not a negotiation. So I rebuilt the entire thing on my own website. I'm calling it "Name Journey." Before I explain how it works, a quick side note: for now, the directory contains Arabic names only. My goal was to solve my own problem first, but I do plan to add more languages in the future if people find the tool useful.

 The new system is a multi-stage process designed for maximum efficiency and minimum conflict:

 1. The Secret Swipe: We each get the same stack of name cards. We swipe right for "Yes" and left for "No" on our own time. No discussion, no debate. Just pure, unbiased instinct.

 2. The Solo Ranking: After swiping, the app takes each person's "liked" list and initiates a "This vs. That" tournament. This forces each of us to rank our own favorites, creating a personal, scored list from 1 to N.

 3. The Big Reveal: This is the magic part. The app acts as the neutral third party. It cross-references our two secretly ranked lists, finds the names we *both* liked, adds our rank scores together for each common name, and presents a final, combined leaderboard. The name with the lowest total score is our most compatible choice.

 It turned a recurring argument into a fun date night activity. We now have our mathematically-proven shortlist, and peace has been restored to the household. Since this game worked for us, I figured it might help others. You can try it for yourself, it's completely free.

Here's the link

Phase 4: The Marketing Plan

 Now that the app is built, how do I market it with zero budget? My solution came to me in my wife's gynecologist waiting room: a goldmine of bored, expecting parents. I'm designing some small flyers to "accidentally" leave behind on our next visit. It’s practically a public service: they get a fun game to kill time, and I get highly targeted traffic. Wish me luck.

A Fun Fact: The "This vs. That" ranking system is a simplified version of a sorting algorithm. By forcing a binary choice between two options repeatedly, the app can efficiently build a complete ranked list of your preferences without you having to think too hard about the whole list at once.

Behind the title: Getting a "match" to find your partner feels like Level 1. But agreeing on a baby name together? That's the first true co-op campaign to beat the final boss.