Yuen: What’s in a boat name? I asked this Minnesotan viral TikToker for help.

Last summer I shared with you my sudden conversion to becoming a Minnesota “lake person,” thanks to a new pontoon in our family. I’m relieved to report that my husband and I are still married, despite some spicy arguments we’ve shared at the public boat launch.

But one thing that we still haven’t done is give our boat a name.

On a recent trip to Florida, we and our two young sons strolled along a marina to check out the moniker of every yacht and sailboat, admiring the originality and wit that went into each name. Just Driftin’ was one we thought about stealing. We’ve since daydreamed about other names, something clever or meaningful, seafaring or sentimental.

There’s Jesse’s Girl, a nod to my husband’s first name and the conventional wisdom that boats should be female. But he’s always detested that Rick Springfield song, so that was a hard pass.

Another contender was Drunken Monkey, which is our nickname for our 11-year-old because of his loose-limbed, unpredictable gait while playing soccer.

The kids gravitated toward puns: Fruit of the Loon and Keepin’ It Reel were among their lake-loving suggestions.

Why Go Home, a Pearl Jam song chorus, seemed like an apt mantra for staying on the water just a little longer. (Never mind that the tune is actually about a girl unjustly put in a mental institution.)

Nothing stuck.

So I called in a professional. Emily Kim, 33, is a wildly imaginative professional baby-name consultant from Plymouth who has a talent for predicting the baby names of pregnant influencers and celebrities. Her TikTok videos are well researched, hilarious and mildly obsessive. (She accurately guessed that Jason and Kylie Kelce’s third daughter would be named Bennett, given their preference for boyish girl names and an affinity for a double T.)

A photographer by training, Kim said she’s always been fascinated by baby names, way more than anyone in her life. They are a projection of the parents’ vibe and aesthetic, much more so than the baby’s, she said.

“If a parent is naming a kid Ocean, it’s not guaranteeing the child will be a cool surfer kid, but that the parent wants to portray their family as easy, breezy, outdoorsy. They probably go to Hawaii and they’re so in tune with nature. The baby has none of that. The baby is a baby.”

And yet for my husband and me, landing names for our kids or dog didn’t confound us nearly as much as doing it for our boat.

Our main criteria were that the name should capture our family’s personality, have some fun and maybe bring a smile to a stranger’s face.

This was hardly the practice for ancient Greek mariners who named their vessels after goddesses more out of superstition in hopes of safe passage. Today’s boat names are typically brief, might play on a popular catchphrase, could be named after a mother or spouse, and if punny or funny, should not be in poor taste. (My friend, however, recently found a 1988 MasterCraft for sale on Facebook Marketplace out of Princeton, Minn., with the name Wet Dreamzzz. Yes, that’s three Z’s.)

Kim, who has also been hired to brainstorm stage names, transgender name changes and pet names, had never been asked to name a boat before, but she dove into the challenge. Over email, I told her a little bit about our pontoon, the Itasca County lake on which we set out for our maiden voyage, and other names we’ve toyed with. She came up with about a dozen possibilities, many of which reflected our state’s Viking heritage. (Think Nordic, not NFL.) The seafaring pillagers were probably the furthest thing from our mild-mannered and Midwestern pontoon, but that’s what made her suggestions so delightful:

• Hilda VonPontoon

• Fjordmaiden

• Frida Fishies

• Fjord Slayer

• Gertrude

When I shared these with my family, Gertrude left us with a sweet feeling. Kim explained that it was a “nostalgic Nordic favorite of mine, once given to a mini gnome perched in a house plant. Gertie is long gone but the stoic strength of such a girthy name deserves to be passed on to another,” she said.

Kim also researched the kinds of fish that could be found in our favored lake and riffed off those. Minnow Sota Nice was an endearing take, as was Mellow Perch, a playoff of yellow perch and a spot-on description for a moseying family pontoon.

The lure-crazed boys in my family especially loved Kim’s fishing puns. The one we all chuckled over was Largemouth Sass. Kim said it felt particularly fitting for someone in journalism.

But she admitted it’s not uncommon for her clients to go with one of the original names they were considering after hearing her suggestions. She likens it to a person who thinks they love strawberry ice cream. After she introduces them to flavors like cookies and cream or pistachio, they still might have their heart set on strawberry. She encourages people to trust their gut.

“You have such a greater confirmation of your favorite,” Kim said. “So, if you come away from this and it reconfirms that you love Drunken Monkey the most, that is still amazing.”

My vote’s for Largemouth Sass, but we’re not in a rush. Unlike a baby, there’s no hard deadline for naming a boat. That means we could be Just Driftin’ in perpetual search for that perfect one.