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Beyond Jennifer & Jason, Madison & Montana

NATURE NAMES: Will trees be the new flower names?

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Now that just about every flower in the garden has been dug up and used by baby namers for at least a century, maybe it’s time to look beyond to their more imposing cousins. There’s a very big difference between the two: Where most floral names are frilly and feminine, many, if not most, arboreal names are strong, sturdy, and much more masculine.

The forest is fairly unexplored territory; with the exception of a few names like Hazel, Olive and Willow, most of the standard tree names are just waiting to be discovered. Here are some possibilities:

NAMES OF TREES

SUITABLE FOR GIRLS

ACACIA
APPLE
ASPEN
BAY
CASSIA
CHERRY
CINNAMON
CITRON
EBONY
HAZEL
HOLLY
JACARANDA
JUNIPER
LAUREL
LINDEN
MAGNOLIA
MIMOSA
MYRTLE
OLIVE
PLUM
SENNA
SEQUOIA
WILLOW

SUITABLE FOR BOYS

ALDER
ASH
ASPEN
BALSAM
BAMBOO
BANYAN
BAY
BEECH
BIRCH
CEDAR
CYPRESS
ELM
JUNIPER
LINDEN
MAPLE
OAK
PINE
QUINCE
TEAK
YEW

NAMES RELATED TO TREES

BRANCH
FOREST
GROVE
LEAF
MOSS
SHADE
SYLVAN

Almost every ethnicity’s name bank has a profusion of names related to nature, and that includes trees. Here’s a small sampling of foreign names related to trees:

ALAQUA — Native American, sweet gum tree
ALON, ALONA — Hebrew, oak tree
BIRK — Scottish, birch tree
ILANA–Hebrew, tree
IOBHAR (ee-var) — Irish, yew
LINNEA — Scandinavian, lime or linden tree
LLORA — Catalan, laurel tree
MAC DARA — Irish, son of the oak
MANJOLA — Albanian, magnolia
MATSUKO — Japanese, pine tree child
NAOKI — Japanese, straight tree
OIHANE (oy-ah-neh) — Basque, from the forest
OLIVIER –French, olive tree
OREN — Hebrew, pine tree
ORNA — Hebrew, pine tree
ORNELLA — Italian, flowering ash tree
SUZUKI — Japanese, bell tree
TAMAR — Hebrew, palm tree
YVES, YVETTE –French, yew tree

Tags: baby name Apple, baby name Forest, cool baby names, green names, nature names, Olive, tree names, unique baby names, unusual baby names, Willow

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, boys' names, cool baby names, girl names, girls' names, green names, nature names, tree names, unique baby names, unusual baby names . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

15 Responses to “NATURE NAMES: Will trees be the new flower names?”

rachelmarie Says:

October 20th, 2009 at 2:20 am

I love and adore the names Cassia and Hazel.
Linden is definitely a cool option for a boys name.

Nephele Says:

October 20th, 2009 at 3:03 am

I love this blog! With my fondness for flower and tree names (for my Flower Fairy Names anagramming topic in your “Talk About Names” forum) I have some more for you:

BJORK – Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish, birch tree
CORNEL – another name for the dogwood tree.
FRESNO – Spanish, ash tree
HAYA – Spanish, beech tree
KIEFER – German, pine tree
LARK – Swedish, larch tree
ROWAN
TILIA – Latin, linden or lime tree

Elea Says:

October 20th, 2009 at 4:12 am

Rowan (for a boy), Bryony, Cassia are my favourite tree names.

I also love the Welsh ones: Bedwen (birch) Celynnen (holly), Collen (holly), Corsen (reed), Derwen (oak)

Cornish: Derowen (oak), Elowen (elm)

Okay, technically Corsen (reed) doesn’t count as a tree name but I like it all the same

Elea Says:

October 20th, 2009 at 4:34 am

** oops! Collen was meant to be ‘hazel’ not ‘holly’ ^^

I really like Nephele’s suggestion of Tilia as well!

phaedra Says:

October 20th, 2009 at 8:12 am

There are some very good options here. One of my favorites, though, is Daphne (laurel).

JustADad Says:

October 20th, 2009 at 9:46 am

I would not name a child Bamboo, Cypress, or Maple under any circumstances, and if I did, I would have to provide them with ninja training for the playground.

Abby Says:

October 20th, 2009 at 10:28 am

I love Linden! I have an aunt Linda, and Linden has long made the list of possible middle names for a daughter, in her honor. I think it would wear well on a son, too. And I adore Bay, but I don’t think of the tree – for me, it has always been a water name.

JustADad, I think I agree about Bamboo. Maple and Cypress would fit right in ’round here, but Bamboo is truly daring – maybe too much so!

Elsa Says:

October 20th, 2009 at 11:09 am

Plum is a guilty pleasure of mine. I’d never use it as a first name, but should we have another daughter in the future, I want to call her Dorothea Plum.

Dearest Says:

October 20th, 2009 at 11:22 am

I love tree names!!
For girls Cassia, Cinnamon, Jacaranda, Magnolia, Mimosa and Plum are favourites, especially Magnolia! Jacaranda isn’t my style, but I think she’s fabulous as well!! Very spunky, but has a bit more to it than Juniper in my head, and she’s a bit more feminine ^^
Aldar, Ash, Birch, Cedar, Elm and Oak are favourites for boys, Oak being the best of them…
I can’t see what Maple is doing on the boys list, that’s a little girl’s name in my head!!

Forest, Grove and Moss are also good for boys, Sylvan is a favourite along with Sylvester/Silvester. Leaf is also cool, but feels more girly to me…
Olivier, Oren and Tamar are also favourites, but Tamar only if pronounced TAY-mahr…

Balsam is funny because in Norwegian it what we call hair conditioner XD Just the thought of naming a child ‘hair conditioner’ is ridiculous!

As for more tree names, there are some Norwegian ones, but they’re very similar to the English
Alm – Elm
Lind – Linden
Eik – Oak
Vier – Willow (prn. VEE-er)

Charlotte Vera Says:

October 20th, 2009 at 1:01 pm

Very interesting. I have friends who just named their daughter Tamar Sophia.

pippa Says:

October 20th, 2009 at 4:25 pm

We have friends that just named their son Banyan!

Emmeline Says:

October 20th, 2009 at 7:55 pm

Yew would make me crazy due to the sound of (if not the actual) bad grammar. “What is Yew doing?” “Yew is playing with his truck.”

Plus, “What’s your name?”-”Yew” conversation feels a little “Who’s On First?”

Linda Rosenkrantz Says:

October 20th, 2009 at 8:47 pm

Thank yew–too true. I’m sure Hughs run into similar problems.

disa_lan Says:

October 21st, 2009 at 1:48 am

YAY! I love trees This is a great blog.

Elea – Elowen is so pretty.

stephanie_elizabeth Says:

October 21st, 2009 at 2:27 pm

I love Bryony but don’t favor most other tree names in general. My best friend recently named her daughter Aspen (yes, a girl) but I have gotten around the unisex feel of it (which is why I’m not a fan b/c I don’t like unisex names) by calling her Penny.