Look, here at Mpls.St.Paul we love a TikTok rabbit hole—especially one based in something we’d never spent much time thinking about. Since its inception, TikTok has been a place where creators can acquire huge masses of followers for the most specific, bizarre, or niche-friendly topics and talents. (Who could have seen the trend of organization-Tok and rice-art coming?) And we love it even more when our rabbit holes turn up a local connection—which is what led us to Emily Kim, AKA @emdoodlesandstuff, a Plymouth photographer best known for predicting baby names for pregnant influencers.
Like we said, niche-famous, in the most fascinating way.
“The idea to make an influencer baby name prediction video popped into my head shortly after attending a friend’s baby shower last summer,” Kim says. “And I posted it on a total whim. By Labor Day 2021 it had reached about 900,000 viewers.”
Today, Kim has over 200,000 subscribers, and her videos often see around 1 million views. She’s touched on celebs like Kylie Jenner (although she typically stays away from those who are more than social media–famous), all the way down to people with a few thousand followers.
How it works: Kim finds an oversharing influencer who’s due soon and, basically, scours their social media platforms (specifically Instagram) for clues on what they might name their new bébé. She takes into account any older kids’ names, which she calls the best clue; where they live; their general vibe; any hints they’ve given; anything seemingly meaningful to the parents. It’s not an exact science.
“The videos can be very research-based and logical or silly and light-hearted,” Kim says. “Sometimes I predict just one name. My longest list was probably 25.”
She rattles off her predictions—and reasons—in less than three minutes. And yes, she has accurately predicted a name a handful of times. “Around 10, I believe,” she guesses.
And, to give us all closure, she posts update videos after the babies are born, sharing the name and how close she got—or if the name came, to her, totally out of left field.
Maybe it’s the speed at which she rattles through her predictions and reasonings—her speaking rate puts Gilmore Girls to shame, a welcome trait on this get-to-the-point short-attention-span app—or just the range of her predictions, which nearly guarantee those who find Kim on their TikTok For You Page will bump into an influencer they’ve at least heard of before. Maybe, like organization-Tok, it’s scratching an aspirational domesticity itch we didn’t know we had, or it gets at our obsession with feeling like an insider, with thinking we know something before it even happens. Maybe it’s just fun—either way, Kim’s got a hold on this specific, surprising market.
And in her explorations, she hasn’t ignored her home state influencers. She predicted names for woodsy Minnesota influencer @foxmeetsbear, once-upon-a-time Minnesotan Food Network chef Molly Yeh, and the outdoorsy-cute @dreaming_outloud. All of them had nods to Minnesota, Midwestern, or Scandinavian culture in their predictions—which speaks to Minnesota’s actual baby-naming culture, and not just Kim’s love for her state.
“Something that makes Minnesota unique is it was mainly settled by Scandinavian immigrants, and we see that sprinkled through the culture here,” Kim says, mentioning her love of the American Swedish Institute and Ingebretsen’s. “Looking at the data, a Scandinavian name like ‘Freya’ is more likely to be chosen in Minnesota compared to other states.”
Kim, a mom of two, says she “spent years pondering names for them before they were even conceived.” Each name has a story—not just vibes—behind it. “My son’s name came from a serendipitous experience and my daughter’s name has a family connection,” she says.
For those of us with (ahem) just a few hundred Insta followers, but in desperate need of baby-name help, Kim also offers baby name consultations, ranging from $195 to $285. The consults and videos have taken up enough time to turn into her full-time job, a path this BFA and former portrait/wedding photographer never saw coming. “I mean, ‘baby name consultant’ was certainly never advertised to me at any job fair as a teen!” she says. Thank TikTok and our fascination with being in the know, we suppose?
To travel down our new favorite rabbit hole, visit @emdoodlesandstuff on TikTok or Instagram, or check out her website for deets on baby name consults and more.