Selecting just the right name for a business dedicated to shaping – or at least minding – youngsters is a tricky affair.

Choosing a name is often pivotal for a business’ success. Would Claude AI have been as widely adopted if it were known as Francois, Jacques or Claudia? I’m suggesting probably yes. The fact that this LLM has a human-sounding moniker (as opposed to, say, ChatGPT), and that the sobriquet is male doesn’t seem to have impacted its popularity – except perhaps positively.

Wordplay is acceptable in business branding, but only in some industries. Floristry is a domain where punny names often flourish, for instance. The Lone Hydrangea and Good Scents are two clever local examples that come to mind.

Hairdressing salons provide an opportunity for nominative creativity. Hawthorn’s Hitchcock Blondes evokes glamour and danger, and King’s Domain emits a vibe of monarchical imprimatur – hinting, perhaps, that a royal warrant has been granted in acknowledgement of its tonsorial services. The Mane Stage in Surrey Hills is quite a clever name, I think. Who wouldn’t want their haircut to be front and centre?

You would think childcare services is an industry requiring careful consideration of operating title. Overly humorous and young parents might assess a service to be a touch too frivolous to oversee their progeny. Strike the wrong tone and customers might look elsewhere.

Recently the large (some might say “imposing”) childcare centre located directly over the road from me re-branded from “Genius” to “Shared Beginnings”.

The erstwhile name strikes me as intimidatingly ambitious; the newer title is a little warmer and more honest. Nothing is being promised here beyond a journey’s commencement.

I wonder if the inspiration behind Genius was to cater for ready-made brilliant tykes, or rather, to cultivate them? Was “genius” a recruiting standard (no average kids allowed), or an aspiration? It wasn’t clear. Perhaps a bit of both. If it was the former, parents anxious about their children’s shining future could rest assured they were in the right environment. You don’t want your smart kids being held back by slowpoke classmates. Every child at Genius is a wunderkind – this was the unspoken promise.

If the name was more about education, appropriate encouragement and training would of course need to be implemented. In this scenario, the young charges would be put through quotidian lessons in calculus, programming, haiku, music composition, finger painting (hey, it is childcare after all), rhetoric, Ancient Greek, mnemonics and logic before it’s time for milk and fruit and a nap.

“Shared Beginnings” is perhaps less prescriptive than Genius, and more descriptive and evocative. On a new board out the front, the accepted range of children to be minded is listed as starting at zero and extending to six, with both childcare and kindergarten offered. They really are starting at the beginning, then, reflecting what must be a heartbreaking reality that for some families, babies in the first few months of life must be left in professional care while their parents both go off to work. Of course, issues such as this are far more important than whatever brand a childcare operation chooses for the shingle out the front.

The economics of childcare are vexing. The owners and upper management of the big operators can make considerable coin – sums measured in the hundreds of thousands for the high brass, millions for the owners. Meanwhile, staff are paid minimum wage or close to it, and it costs parents a considerable sum to use the services. Oftentimes this number is so high that careful consideration must be given as to whether the work/childcare equation actually makes sense financially. Other difficult decisions must be made, and questions asked. Should one parent stay home full-time? Can the grandparents help out?

The Australia Institute has suggested that childcare should be free for all, and that this might be a savvy investment by the federal government to ensure the sustainability of the workforce, providing more support and choice for new mothers wishing to return to the workforce sooner rather than later. Certainly, it might be a fairer, more egalitarian and possibly more effective distribution of revenue than providing subsidies for the fossil fuel extractors, or the considerable subsidies that are issued to private schools.

Yet these kinds of discussions take place far away from the daily activities of the centres themselves. If I step outside on a working-from-home day I can hear plenty of laughter and cavorting emanating from Shared Beginnings, which I take as a good sign.

As for other childcare centres located close by, the names fall broadly into three categories. There are the “fun” names such as Dancing Dandelion, Choklits, KindiCare and Toddle, implying children will embrace the good times on offer in these premises.

Evocative monikers such as Wildwood suggest open vistas and lush greenery to navigate. Now this may well be the case, but at first glance it would appear that the business had no outdoor component and few windows from which to view the outside world, which in any case is more suburban mall than verdant delight.

There is also a slew of facilities with aspirational names such as Discovery Bay, Explorers and Starting Blocks.

Another local childcare centre goes by the moniker of “Little Assets”. What a brutal and reductionist way of seeing the world this represents. This is your child as line item, as ledger entry – an entity to be invested in or written off should the need arise.

Or perhaps the proprietors are using the language of espionage films, where the powers that be – usually hatchet-faced men in grey suits – must on occasion “engage the asset” to deal with unfortunate circumstances or clandestine assignments, such as quietly eliminating a head of state or a pesky UN major domo.

To provide the skills necessary for such acts, the appropriate training and encouragement would be required. I’m thinking something like The Bourne Identity’s Treadstone program – but for tiny tots. The day might start with the squad rucking the back streets of Kew to warm up. Then it’s back to HQ for Ashtanga yoga, Krav Maga, calisthenics, spy craft and weapons training. Hogwarts for hitmen, in other words (and doesn’t that sound catchy?).

This would make Little Assets a training school for aspiring professional assassins in the guise of a suburban child-minding facility. Now that really would be genius.