Classy, cool British names are one of my favorite groups. I love the day once a quarter or so that I allow myself to wallow in the London Telegraph birth announcements.

Britberries regularly admonish me not to take the British names in the Telegraph to mean anything about typical British baby-naming behavior: Those are names chosen by mostly upper class families, they say, and are examples of a rarefied taste.

Point taken, but I still can’t help but be struck by how different many of the names are from what you’d hear in similar stratospheres of American society: on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, say, or in Beverly Hills.

There are dozens of names that are mentioned over and over in the British birth announcements that are nowhere near as fashionable here. But they’re attractive names, traditional yet quirky, excellent choices for any American parent — or British, Australian, or Canadian one, for that matter — who wants to emulate the English upper classes.

Prime examples from the recent crop of classy, cool British names:

British Girl Names

British Boy Names