Category: Baby Name News
By Abby Sandel
Michael Phelps might be the most decorated Olympian of the modern era, but his name? It’s one in the crowd.
Classic, Biblical Michael reigned as the number one name in 1985 – the year Phelps was born. In fact, Michael topped the charts from the 1950s until the late 1990s. Everybody likes Mike.
But when it came time to name his son, he and fiancé Nicole Johnson opted for something different. He told Jimmy Fallon that they didn’t want “a normal name.”
Their baby boy is Boomer, a name both bold and rare. My first thought was the Battlestar Galactica character, but Phelps and Johnson just plain liked the unconventional sound. The new dad added that his son is “definitely gonna be the cool kid.”
But it’s not just Boomer. R-ending cool boy names are having a moment. Wilder broke into the US Top 1000 last year, and the winner of this year’s Invent a Name contest is the edgy, outdoorsy Trekker. Other contest entries included Tracker, Raider, and import Elsker.
After years of two-syllable, ends-in-n names for boys dominating, maybe it’s time for ends-in-r names to be the new cool boy names. Here are nine possibilities inspired by Boomer.
Hot off the press! The breaking news of the Top 100 British baby names!
By Eleanor Nickerson
After making us wait an agonising extra three weeks this year, The Office of National Statistics has finally released the top baby names for England and Wales in 2015.
Once again — unsurprisingly — Amelia and Oliver reign supreme. This is Amelia‘s fifth and Oliver‘s third year in the number one spot.
The Top 10 itself hasn’t changed much, although George, Noah, Ella and Mia have shown quite significant rises.
The new additions to the top 100 show the influence of celebrity and media influence: Jaxon, Roman, Reggie, Carter for boys and Penelope, Mila, Clara, Arabella, Maddison and Aria for girls.
By Abby Sandel and Linda Rosenkrantz
Whew!
If we’ve ever had the slightest doubts about the creativity of the Nameberry community, they are hereby gone forever.
When we announced our latest Invent-a-Baby-Name challenge two weeks ago, we expected something like the healthy response we got last time—which was 222 entries.
This time we were overwhelmed by 590 separate responses. And since we generously invited you to not limit yourself to a single suggestion, some of the comments packed with dozens of names, as you opened the floodgates to your inventive ideas, bringing the total number of names well into the several thousands. Our intrepid intern, Laura, counted 5,665 separate entries!
After painstakingly (and exhaustedly) considering every single name, we soon realized that it would be almost impossible to narrow down the winner to just one name.
And so we have broken it down into seven of the most highly represented categories—after realizing that inventing a name doesn’t have to mean completely creating one out of whole cloth, but could also include transforming words and surnames and place names that haven’t been used for real-life kids before into viable baby names. In fact, one of our prime criteria was wearability–could we see this name actually being used?
The overall winner for 2016 is at the very bottom of the post, but first, let’s look at some of the best invented names entered this year, with the favorite name in each category in boldface type!
By Sophie Kihm
This month’s predictions of celebrity baby names features two exciting firsts for me: my first twin prediction, and my first Duggar prediction! I’ve been crossing my fingers for a Duggar pregnancy announcement since I started this series six months ago, and now here it is. But that’s not all the good news this month. Mick Jagger is going to be a dad again, as is Sam Worthington. Plus, Jenna Jameson is having her third baby. This means we’ve got a lot of stylish, alliterative, and probably zany celebrity baby names birth announcements coming up. I’ve taken a stab at predicting them below.
By Abby Sandel
Vintage girl names can make great choices for a daughter born today. They’re tied to the past, have plenty of great namesakes, and yet feel fresh and unexpected, too.
The only problem? Many of them are far more popular than you might expect.
Anna Chlumsky, the My Girl child star turned Emmy-nominated Veep cast member, recently welcomed her second daughter. She and husband Shaun So embraced the vintage girl names trend with her name: Clara Elizabeth, a little sister for Penelope Joan.
A former Top Ten favorite, Clara brings to mind The Nutcracker, silent film star Clara Bow, and Red Cross founder Clara Barton. No surprise, then, that the name ranked Number 98 in 2015.
That’s not nearly as common as Emma, Sophia, or Charlotte. But with similarly antique choices like Lucy, Violet, and Eleanor in vogue, it’s likely that Clara is catching on.
What’s a lover of vintage names to do? Look farther down the list, of course! Here are nine vintage girl names that remain quietly under-the-radar – for now.