Securing your baby's name online

Registering a domain for a child before they can type sounds extreme — and it has quietly become ordinary. Parenting and news outlets have described the practice for nearly two decades: parents reserve the child’s name as a domain (and matching social handles) so that a piece of their identity is waiting, unspoiled, when they grow up.

For $10 to $20 a year, you can purchase a domain like johnsmith.com — just think about how hard it is to reserve a name once it is gone.

That line echoes a widely syndicated 2025 piece on securing a child’s digital identity, and surveys going back to at least 2018 have found large shares of millennial parents reserving names for future use. Whatever the exact numbers, the logic is simple: desirable name domains are being registered continuously, and a child’s full name is exactly the kind that gets taken.

What parents actually register

• firstlast.com — the core. If it is taken (common names usually are), first-last.com or firstlast.me are the standard fallbacks.
• lastname.family — one address for the whole household: announcements, photo pages, reunion plans.
• A nickname or hyphenated spelling you already use, so it does not get squatted later.

What it costs, honestly

A standard .com runs in the US$10–20 per year range at major registrars; specialty endings like .family or .me typically cost more (roughly US$20–40 per year — check live prices, they change often and promotions vary). There is no need to buy “premium” listings or bundles to secure a child’s name.

A privacy note worth reading

Securing the domain is different from publishing your child’s life on it. Plenty of parents register the name and leave the page empty or private — the reservation itself is the value. If you do build a baby page, remember it is indexed by search engines unless you say otherwise, and children cannot consent to a public digital footprint. Reserve now, publish later, decide as a family.

The 10-minute checklist

1. Decide the exact spelling you consider “their name”, including hyphens.
2. Check the main variants in one search — free name search shows availability across name-shaped endings for free.
3. Register 1–2 variants (the .com or its closest free variant, and optionally lastname.family).
4. Enable auto-renew and WHOIS/domain privacy (free at good registrars).
5. File the registrar login with your family documents. In 18 years, that password will matter.

Sources: Fox News, “Smart parents can secure their child’s digital identity” (May 2025); New York Post coverage of a 2018 millennial-parent survey; long-running coverage of the practice since at least 2007 (NBC News). Figures are as reported by those outlets; we do not re-verify survey methodology.