April The Giraffe Baby Name: Early Favorites Emerge For Animal Adventure Park’s New Contest [Updated]


Got any ideas for April the giraffe and her baby’s name? Animal Adventure Park has just launched a contest that allows giraffe cam viewers to help in the naming process, as they choose their own names and effectively vote for them. And while the Harpursville, N.Y. park is keeping things under wraps and not sharing any partial results, there are some names that may have a better chance than others of winning the baby name contest.

According to Animal Adventure Park’s website for the April the giraffe baby naming contest, the voting process will last about 10 days, with users free to choose their own names, right down to the exact spelling of the name. After about five days, which marks the end of the first stage, AAP will announce a list of 10 finalists, which voters will have to choose from in the baby name contest’s second stage. That means we should know the name of April the giraffe’s fourth calf before the end of the month.

Each vote costs $1 and will be charged to a user’s PayPal account, with a minimum of five votes and no maximum amount of names or votes. Funds raised from the April the giraffe baby name contest will go toward giraffe conservation efforts, Animal Adventure Park’s operations, and Ava’s Little Heroes, a charity event for families of children going through “unexpected medical journeys.” The event was named after the daughter of AAP owner Jordan Patch, who was born in January 2016 with an arachnoid cyst that may potentially affect the quality of her life as she grows older.

Now that you know the mechanics of Animal Adventure Park’s baby name contest, it’s time to look at some of the names that Facebook users have suggested since the contest was launched on Saturday.

The name Wyatt has been dropped from time to time, even as April prepared to give birth, and the reason it’s stood out as a top April the giraffe baby name candidate is simple – it’s a play on the words “why it,” or “why (does) it take so long,” as an Animal Adventure Park Facebook commenter had suggested. And it also happens to be a fairly popular name for baby boys. According to Baby Center’s rankings for the year 2016, Wyatt was the 36th most popular male name.

Baby Center’s data suggests that Apollo, despite its status as a fast-rising masculine name, is still far removed from Wyatt and other common baby names, with a ranking of 578th among male names for the year 2016. But it’s shaping up as another favorite in the April the giraffe baby name contest. The name was suggested yesterday by a Facebook commenter, who explained that Apollo is a combination of the names April, Oliver, and the words “little one.” And so far, her comment has gotten more than 33,000 likes, making it, by far, the top favorite based on Facebook reactions alone.

Late last night, another woman had suggested Apollo as a name for April the giraffe’s new calf, using the very same explanation – AP for April, OL for Oliver, LO for little one.

Apollo and Wyatt may have gotten thousands of likes from Facebook users, but there are some other well-liked names that may or may not be in the mix once the top 10 names in the contest’s first stage are revealed later on this week.

One user brought up the history of negative events that took place on the date April’s fourth calf was born – the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. As the calf’s birth also took place on April 15, the user suggested Phoenix, as she believes the event represents a “rise from the ashes of negativity.”

Other users have taken the simpler approach and gotten many likes for their suggestions – some of the simpler April the giraffe baby name candidates have included Harpur (or short for Harpursville), and Patch or Patches, in honor of Jordan Patch himself.

As of 1:40 p.m. ET, Harpur and Patches appear to be gaining lots of momentum among Animal Adventure Park Facebook followers, and now have close to 6,000 and 4,000 likes respectively. Additionally, the name Jasce (pronounced “Jace”) has more than 5,200 likes as a clever acronym incorporating the names of AAP employees — J for Jordan (Patch), A for Allysa (Swilley), S for (Dr. Tim) Slater, C for Corey (Dwyer), and E for Earth, or the thousands of giraffe cam viewers who eagerly awaited the birth of April’s calf.

Of course, there’s the possibility of users taking advantage of the freedom Animal Adventure Park has given them, and choosing some of the most outlandish, silly names possible. A report from Mashable states that several Twitter users have suggested giving April the giraffe’s baby the name “Harambe” after the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla who was shot and killed last year when a child fell into his enclosure. And the Inquisitr wrote on Saturday that there have been instances where giving the public so much freedom to choose names has arguably backfired, such as the time “Boaty McBoatface” was chosen as the name of a British polar research vessel.

Do you have other suggestions for April the giraffe and her baby’s name, or do you want to share the names you entered in the Animal Adventure Park baby name contest? Don’t be shy and sound off in the comments section below!

[Featured Image by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images]

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