Holiday Miracle: Parents let Internet name their daughter, disaster doesn’t ensue

Here’s a surprisingly effective PR campaign. (Let’s be honest, right?) A GTA couple signed up to let a Facebook group vote on what their unborn daughter’s name would be. The winner, as of the child’s birthday? The surprisingly pleasant “Melania.”  The Toronto Star reports:

The vote was organized by FabFind, a four-month-old daily deals website. CEO Bill Heilmann said more than 22,000 people — some from as far away as South Africa, China and Brazil — voted to name little Melania.

A Facebook spokesperson said the vote was a “neat idea” but couldn’t say if this is the first time parents have named a baby according to public opinion. A Chatham couple created a page asking for baby name suggestions earlier this year, but they got to choose the winner. And a woman who promised to name her son “Megatron” if her brother got one million Facebook fans ended up calling the baby Dylan.

The Alpinellis win a year’s worth of coupons for their participation in the contest—once they produce a birth certificate. There’s always a catch, right? No Megatron-style cheating.

Frankly, the Alpinellis are probably just thankful the Internet didn’t produce some disaster like “Poopmeister” or “Kal-El” (oh, wait). The selection of names was moderated, but this is the Internet we’re talking about: if Mastercard is vulnerable to mischief, then baby naming certainly is.

• Baby Melania named after Facebook vote [Toronto Star]
• Baby’s name chosen by Facebook vote [Toronto Sun]
• Facebook users name Toronto baby Melania in vote [CTV News]