And in the past nine months, I've named 250,000 Chinese babies.
(Laughter)
Hi, my name's Beau.
I'm 17 years old.
I named the first 162,000 for free to promote the site.
And then I started charging 60p for the service.
I currently name around 850 babies a day.
(Laughter)
On the 6th of September,
a local newspaper came to interview me about the site,
and to my surprise, the BBC picked up the story.
After that, it just went crazy.
Within 48 hours, 187 news channels in 18 different countries
had written a story,
and they were all talking about 'Specialname'.
Basically, what's all this Chinese baby naming stuff about?
In my first week back at school,
I had just done OK in my GCSEs,
and my plan was to ease my way into my A-levels unnoticed.
I'm quite shy, so I like to stay under the radar.
And I don't really like the way I look in the photographs very often,
so the idea of being viral and the whole experience
was very overwhelming.
I'd only told a few of my closest friends about creating the site,
and I hadn't told my school,
because I didn't think anyone would be very interested.
And when I began getting bombarded with messages from teenagers
asking for advice,
adults asking for me to employ them,
and some Russian man asking for the rights to franchise,
it was slightly strange.
One of the strangest things was my friend saying
that a girl where she lived had been set a business studies homework on me.
I was fine with being in the Gloucestershire Echo
next to the apple-picking festival,
but I really didn't know how I felt about being a project.
One of the things I did like was, after the Times article,
my friends were telling me how their parents were having a go at them
for, 'Sitting around all summer,
and Beau's been naming all these babies.'
(Laughter)
And even prompted a half apology from my mum and dad
for not joining the Young Enterprise Club,
which is like an entrepreneur society at my school.
Yeah, so enough about me and more about the site.
What's this baby naming stuff about?
I've been going to China with my mum and my dad for about five years now,
and that's because my dad has business in Nanjing.
So this meant that holidays in my family were quite different.
My friends would go to Cornwall, and I would go to the Great Wall.
I wasn't too happy about that.
And then in Chengdu, about two years ago,
with my mum and my dad when we were visiting the pandas,
a business colleague of my dad, Mrs.Wang,
asked me to suggest an English name for her three-year-old daughter.
I was surprised and obviously flattered.
I didn't want to give a bad recommendation,
so I said, 'Oh, can you describe your daughter a little bit more for me?'
She then said to me that her daughter was pretty, intelligent, reserved,
but the main thing she stressed was
she wanted her daughter to be able to surprise people
with the things she could achieve.
I gave it some thought,
and I suggested the name Eliza, based on Eliza Doolittle from Pygmalion.
Luckily, Mrs.Wang was delighted,
and she then, in the rest of the holiday, went on to describe to me
why Chinese babies would one day need a Western name.
Chinese babies are given a Chinese name,
which contains around two or three Chinese characters.
This creates a unique name with a carefully constructed meaning,
and, I mean, this is great if you're a Chinese,
but these names don't work outside of China.
We can't read them, we can't pronounce them,
and we can't remember them.
This means that also there's another little problem,
and the Chinese characters can't be used in email addresses.
So if you don't have a Western name,
you can't email, purchase online or basically function in the 21st century.
So why don't Chinese parents just give their child a Western name by themselves?
And this is because on the internet in China a lot of it is censored,
and the majority of websites are restricted.
So even if they were able to gain access to a baby naming site,
they'd have to be able to read English.
Historically, your English teacher in China would give you your English name,
or you'd pick one yourself.
And this is where it gets funny,
and universities start receiving applications
from Goofy Li,
Rolex Wang,
(Laughter)
and Gandalf Wu.
(Laughter)
Yeah, but while we're feeling superior and we're laughing at the Chinese,
I do think it is important to remember
that these poor translations can be embarrassing either way.
So for example,
this tough guy thought he was getting a tattoo what said,
'Strength and Powerful'
when really it says 'Angry goldfish'.
(Laughter)
Also, I've realised that we are actually all quite similar
and that mums everywhere have one thing in common,
and that's that they want the best for their child.
I thought that rather than make a mistake and pick a silly name,
they'd enjoy using a service where they can pick an appropriate name
based on their own choice of characteristics.
There are 16 million babies born in China every year,
and now they're allowed two babies each.
I thought it might be profitable to help.
(Laughter)
So, I think the best way to show you is to just show you.
Let's pick a special name.
So here's the homepage.
There's two icons, a boy and a girl,
and below are cartoons
where you can see how bad your life will be without a special name.
First off, there's a kindergartener who's happy she has a special name
because it means that her teacher can remember her name,
and she can make friends easily.
Then, there's Minnie, who didn't have a special name.
She couldn't go to university,
and she now just has to sit at home while Catherine and William graduate.
Then, there's a businessman who is embarrassed
because he doesn't have a special name
and he knows that his English name has a bad meaning,
so he doesn't want to give his card over to his partner.
OK, so today I'm going to pick a baby girl.
And then, there's 12 characteristics, and I'm going to pick five
which I think best represent how I want my baby to be when she's older.
Today, I think I'm going to make her intelligent, confident.
I'd quite like her to be honest,
and I'd also quite like her to be creative,
and we don't want her to be too much of an overachiever,
so empathetic.
Then we begin the naming process by clicking on the green button.
And then it'll start to load
as a specialist is beginning the naming process.
Then, when the icon pops up, we know our name's been chosen,
and when I press the green button,
you put in your Alipay ID,
which is the equivalent of PayPal in China.
I get 60p; you get three names.
Here are three names:
Karen, Ella and Julia.
Each name is displayed with a meaning,
and then with that name,
you also get two examples of a famous person with that same name.
For example, Karen: Karen Carpenter, the singer,
and Ella: Ella Henderson, X-Factor contestant.
Below there's - I didn't mean that to be offensive -
(Laughter)
there's an orange button, and then if you click on this button,
you can then share your three suggestions with friends and family via WeChat.
But I'll get back to that.
A lot of people ask me how I have time to name all these babies.
And much like Google has time to find everything for everyone all at once,
I use an algorithm.
The techie people in the room
will know how simple a filter and score algorithm is,
but the basic principle is that I built a database of 4,000 names,
added five characteristics to each name
which I think best represent what that name means.
The user then picks five characteristics,
and then the algorithm matches my five to their five,
and three suggestions are given.
Why three? This is the cool bit.
I'm 17, I don't know you, I can't name your baby.
(Laughter)
So basically, you get three suggestions
which I think best match how you would like your child to be.
Then you share these three suggestions via WeChat with your friends and family,
and then without the risk of a cultural mistake,
you pick your special name.
In short, the parent picks their baby's name, not me.
I just give three suggestions.
So for example,
'Ella' is liked by grandfather, 'Julia' is liked by a little sister,
brother likes 'Ella',
and then obviously, the husband will agree with his wife.
It's a fun process,
and it brings all friends and family together a really happy time.
It takes three minutes; it costs 60p.
And yeah, I just thought it was a nice thing actually.
Sometimes it's not about just making the money; it's just a nice thing.
Ever since the story about my website went viral,
I've been given some amazing opportunities,
one of which is being able to come here and talk to you today.
I've also tried to make sense of what happened in that first week
when I came back to school,
and this is about as far as I've got.
So, I'm going to read it with you.
I think in the diverse world that we live in
when every day we are prompted by the media
to focus on and fear the differences between cultures,
we see war and terror and sadness.
I think maybe the reason
newspapers in 18 different countries reported this story
was because actually we are more the same than we are different.
We'd rather laugh off our cultural differences than fear them.
We'd rather celebrate success than read more failure.
And this story invited people to be optimistic for 24 hours.
If a British child can make something from nothing,
then maybe the future is not that bleak.
The story also shared the human side of China,
a country often depicted as a sinister global power.
While we're laughing at silly names,
we're also reminded that actually we're all trying to fit in and get along.
Imagine the global impact that could be made
if next week the same newspapers
printed a story about how similar we all are.
Maybe then we could feel safe enough to enjoy the differences.
I think that would be special.
(Applause) (Cheering)
Thank you.