Mom Offers $500 to Help Name Her Baby. She Is Shocked by the Responses (Exclusive)

Having a baby is life-changing, but picking the perfect name can be even more daunting.

Your name is fundamental to your core identity and sense of belonging in the world. It’s the first thing people learn about you, and what follows you throughout your lifetime. It carries weight, history and culture, making it quite a responsibility for expecting parents.

“It’s the most important thing ever,” Jayci Underwood, 34, who is pregnant with her third child, tells PEOPLE exclusively.

“It’s something that they’re gonna be known by the rest of their life,” she continues. “It’s not something that most people change often and it’s not an easy change. So it feels like it’s such an important job, and I want to really take my time and think about it.”

When she wasn’t scrolling late at night with her husband, Underwood went through lists and lists of names, hoping for some inspiration. “I asked ChatGPT, I looked through books and went through different social media videos,” she adds.

That’s when she came across a surprising niche on the internet: TikTok creators who get paid to name babies. “I saw that there are a couple of creators who literally name babies for people. You can pay them to do it. I didn’t even know that was a thing,” she admits.

“There’s one girl that does it for influencers and she basically takes all these different factors about their life and who they are, and she gets really dang close to guessing the baby name almost every time,” she details.

Underwood was curious and looked into the cost, and while she thought it could be a fun idea, she decided to give it her own twist. Instead of hiring a consultant, she’d let her followers in on the process, offering $500 to help name her baby boy.

“It would be super good engagement, ’cause who doesn’t love to win a prize for basically no effort?” she says. “It’s just something that, whether you’ve had a baby or not, everyone has a notes list of names you loved or the ones you would’ve used. So I thought it’d be a fun way to A: give back to my audience, B: make it interactive and C: hopefully get a dang baby name out of it.”

Underwood is no stranger to fun giveaways, as she often shares PR packages with her followers, but she never expected the response to be so overwhelming.

“I knew there would be good engagement, but I could never have predicted this,” she says. “We spend almost every night trying to go through them, and I feel like I’ve read so many names now that I’m just not gonna name this baby. It’s gonna be the first baby without a name.”

The Arizona-based content creator and stay-at-home mom admits she had a soft spot for names starting with R or S, though she didn’t want anything too common.

“I wanted a unique name, but I didn’t want an annoying unique name or one that was too crazy,” she explains.

“We’re a big nickname family, so I wanted to love both the name and the nickname.” Her son Kovey James often goes by KJ, while her daughter Quincy already has a handful of playful nicknames, like Q, Quinn and Quince.

Underwood believes that choosing a name isn’t just about what sounds sweet in childhood, but about who her child will eventually grow into in the real world. “I don’t own my children,” she says.

“One day they’re gonna go out into the world, and the majority of our relationship will be them as an adult and me as an adult. You want to give them a super cutesy name when they’re five and it works, but will it work at 35 in a business setting? Especially with a boy, you want something that feels strong and masculine. It feels like a heavy responsibility, but also so fun at the same time.”