I grew up as Steffen.
It is a name my family imagined for me, and I have always held that fact with genuine warmth. There is something in a name that was truly thought about, truly given, that stays with you regardless of how the world receives it.
And the world, as it turned out, had its own relationship with my name.
There were the repetitions, the misspellings, the occasional Stephan offered back to me with total confidence. Small things, individually. But they added up, over years, to a kind of quiet education. I began to understand that a name does not live only in the mind of the person who gives it or the person who carries it. It lives in every room it enters. It lives in the half-second pause before someone tries to say it, in the way a stranger's face arranges itself when they are not quite sure what they heard. A name is a conversation between a person and the world, and that conversation is different for everyone.
In grade eleven I started going by my middle name, Paris. Not because I had stopped loving Steffen, but because I had started understanding myself a little more clearly, and Paris felt like a more accurate introduction. It was still distinctive, still a little unexpected, but it felt feminine in a way that suited me. People occasionally ask “Caris?”, mostly on the phone or in passing, but the clarification never feels tiresome, just an occasional alignment.
Thankfully I was gifted two names. I found my way to the one that suited the life I was actually living.
What those years gave me was something no book could: a firsthand understanding that how a name is experienced in the world is entirely different from how it sounds in your head. That understanding is at the heart of everything The Namesake Studio does.
I also came to this work as a mother of three. I have sat on the other side of this decision, three times over, with everything it carries: the family expectations, the names you cannot use and cannot fully explain why, the one you love that your partner does not. Naming my own children was one of the great joys of my life. The research, the meaning held inside each name, the sound of it said aloud before it ever belonged to a person.
The Namesake Studio exists because every child deserves to start with a name chosen carefully, given with intention, and worn with pride. Not just a name their parents loved the sound of, but a name that will grow with them, travel well, and feel like theirs from the very beginning.
I would be honoured to help you find it.
Paris
Founder, The Namesake Studio
That is why I built this.
I am not an algorithm. I do not generate lists. I listen, to what you say you want and to what you do not quite have the words for yet. I research names the way a writer researches a character: their history, their sound, their story, how they will age.
I work with a small number of families at a time, in Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, and across Canada. That is a deliberate choice, not a limitation. It means every consultation is personal, unhurried, and genuinely collaborative. I am not running you through a script. I am thinking alongside you.
What I believe about names.
A name is the first story a parent tells about their child. It is the word that will be called across playgrounds and written on diplomas. It is how your child will introduce themselves for the rest of their life.
It deserves more than a scroll through a baby name app.
It deserves research, care, and a conversation with someone who genuinely loves this work, because I do.
