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What's in a name?

Stress.

Sociologists and name researchers say they are seeing unprecedented levels of angst among parents trying to choose names for their children. As family names and old religious standbys continue to lose favor, parents are spending more time and money on the issue and are increasingly turning to strangers for help.

Some parents are checking Social Security data to make sure their choices aren't too trendy, while others are fussing over every consonant like corporate branding experts. They're also pulling ideas from books, Web sites and software programs, and in some cases, hiring professional baby-name consultants who use mathematical formulas.

Denise McCombie, 37, a California mother of two who's expecting a daughter this fall, spent $475 to have a numerologist test her favorite name, Leah Marie, to see if it had positive associations. (It did.) Last March, one nervous mom-to-be from Illinois listed her 16 favorite names on a tournament-style bracket and asked friends, family and people she met at baby showers to fill it out. The winner: Anna Irene.

Sean and Dawn Mistretta from Charlotte, N.C., tossed around possibilities for five months before they hired a pair of consultants — baby-name book authors who draw up lists of suggestions for $50. During a 30-minute conference call with Dawn Mistretta, 34, a lawyer, and Sean Mistretta, 35, a securities trader, the consultants discussed names based on their phonetic elements, popularity, and ethnic and linguistic origins — then sent a 15-page list of possibilities. When their daughter was born in April, the Mistrettas settled on one of the consultants' suggestions — Ava — but only after taking one final straw poll of doctors and nurses at the hospital.

Karen Markovics, 36, who works for the planning department in Orange County, N.C., spent months reading baby books and scouring Web sites before settling on Nicole Josephine. But now, four years later, Markovics says she wishes she'd chosen something less trendy — and has even considered legally changing her daughter's name to Josephine Marie. "I'm having namer's remorse," she says.

The chief reason for the paralysis is too much information. About 80 baby-name books have been published in the last three years, according to Bowker, a publishing database — compared with just 50 such titles between 1990 and 1996. More than 100 specialty Web sites have popped up offering everything from searchable databases and online snap polls to private consultations.

One site, BabyNames.com, says it draws about 1.2 million unique visitors a month, a 50 percent increase in five years — and 3,000 people have used its customized naming service, which provides 12 names for $35. Just this month, the site began offering half-hour phone consulting sessions for $95.

Then there is the seismic influence of Google. When Julie Tiedens, 34, a high school teacher who lives near Eau Claire, Wis., typed her favorite name for a girl, Zoe Rose, into the search engine, she was forced to go back to the drawing board. The name was already taken — by a British porn star. "It was on the first page that came up," she says.

Celebrities (think Apple Martin, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt and Pilot Inspektor Riesgraf-Lee) are helping to drive up the pressure. And the growing brand consciousness among consumers has made parents more aware of how names can shape perceptions. The result: a child's name has become an emblem of individual taste more than a reflection of family traditions or cultural values.

"We live in a marketing-oriented society," says Bruce Lansky, a former advertising executive and author of eight books on baby names, including "100,000+ Baby Names." "People who understand branding know that when you pick the right name, you're giving your child a head start."

Academics say there's been a demonstrable shift in the way people name children. In 2006, just 9.5 percent of boys and roughly 8 percent of girls were given one of the year's 10 most popular names — a combined decline of about 40 percent from the averages in the 1990s, says Cleveland Kent Evans, an associate psychology professor at Bellevue University in Bellevue, Neb., and a past president of the American Name Society. So while a once-ubiquitous name like Mary has fallen from No. 1 during most of the 1950s to No. 84 last year, many new names are taking off. Nevaeh (heaven spelled backward) ranked No. 43 among the 1,000 most popular names in the United States in 2006, and Zayden, another recent creation, was given to 224 boys.

"Names have become a matter of fashion and taste," says Harvard sociologist Stanley Lieberson.

Not everyone is happy about this development. Albert Mehrabian, a professor emeritus of psychology at UCLA and author of "The Baby Name Report Card," has conducted surveys of how people react to different names. He found that more common names elicited positive reactions, while unusual names typically brought negative responses. To him, giving children names that stand out may ultimately be no different than sending them to school with their hair dyed blue. "Yes, you can have someone stand out by being bizarre, but that doesn't mean it's going to be good," he says.

Lisa and Jon Stone of Lynnwood, Wash., turned to a name consultant because they didn't want their son to be "one of five Ashtons in the class," says Lisa Stone, 36, a graphic designer. For Jon Stone, 37, a production director for a nonprofit arts organization, the challenge was to find a "cool" name that would help his son stand out. "An unusual name gets people's attention when you're searching for a job or you're one in a field of many," he says.

At first they considered a family name, Greene, but thought Greene Stone sounded like "some New Age holistic product." Jon Stone liked Finn Stone and Flynn Stone, but thought both sounded too much like the name of a certain modern Stone Age cartoon family. After reading through eight baby-name books, the Stones contacted Laura Wattenberg, author of "The Baby Name Wizard," for advice. She suggested they avoid names that ended in "s," given their last name, or names that seemed to create phrases. Her recommendations: Evander as a top choice, with Levi and Vaughn close behind.

When the Stones unveiled the name Evander Jet to family and friends three months ago, Lisa Stone says they were surprised. "Everybody was like, 'Oh, you named him after the boxer,' when actually it's a really old name."