To celebrate New Orleans’s triumphant Super Bowl victory, as well as today’s Shrove Tuesday launch of  Mardi Gras, here is the fascinating blog created for us last year by guest blogger Elisabeth Wilborn of ”You Can’t Call It It.”  Elisabeth is a writer, artist, and mother who lives in Brooklyn, New York.

 An inspiration for everything from vampires to voodoo, from zydeco to the Krewe of Zulu, Louisiana has been a colorful melting pot of divergent cultures for centuries.  Cajuns from Canada, Creoles and others of Haitian, African, Italian, Spanish, or Native American descent, all come together to form a mélange of backgrounds, and in point of fact, names.  Most share a history of French language and Catholicism, even if it’s not by blood. While these may not be the choices in use today in the Bayou, they have been culled from historical documents, maps, and folklore from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries.  The majority are either French proper, or my favorite, Frenchified.  Still more trace their roots to Classical Greco-Roman civilization, deep Southern culture, or are somewhere farther afield and include a curious preponderance of the letter Z.

So come on!  Allez-y! Chew on these names (and some maque choux), prepare to bare all for those beads, and laissez les bon temps roulez!

LADIES

Acadia- The word Cajun itself has its origins in Acadian

Adelaide

Alexandrine

Alma

Alzophine

Ambrosine

Ameline, Emeline

Arzilla

Avoyelles- This Cajun Parish might be picked up as a first name, piggybacking on the current Ava and Ellie love

Beatrice

Belle

Berangere

Bernadette- A much beloved Catholic saint, and one of the prettiest songs in the native New Orleans Neville Brothers repertoire

Cezelia

Clotille

Delphine- While Delphine is a lovely and lilting name, Delphine La Laurie was a famous socialite and sadist who tortured her slaves

Dixie- Used to refer to the South at large, this may have originated in New Orleans on the ten dollar bill, upon which a local bank printed “dix”, the French for ten.

Dolucila

Elva

Ernestine

Eugenie- Napoleon’s first love

Eula, Eulalie

Evangeline- An epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow recalling the 1755 deportation of Acadian Canadians to the newly Spanish Louisiana

Ezora

Geraldine

Gertrude

Ghislaine

Heloise

Ida

Josephine- Napoleon’s (second) love

Leonie

Lougenia

Magnolia- The state flower of Louisiana

Mahalia- Mahalia Jackson is a gospel and blues singer from the area, with a name worth borrowing

Marie- Marie Laveau was a reknowned Voodoo Queen who was visited by slaves and owners alike

Maude

Maxzille

Melba

Mellette

Minerva, Minnie

Oatha

Odilia

Ola, Olla Mae, Olima

Onezie, Onezime (more…)

We’re all pretty familiar with the names of  the presidents whose surnames have beeen commonly used for children–Jackson, Jefferson, Taylor, Tyler, Lincoln, Truman, Madison, Wilson, Kennedy et al– and we’re equally  familiar with the names of most of their wives as well.

But less well known are the ones they chose for their children, so I thought this was an appropriate occasion to take a look at them. Putting aside the common Johns and Marys, James and Elizabeths (except if they had a noteworthy nickname), and the number of sons who were named Junior for their famous fathers, here are some of the more interesting choices:

GIRLS

ABIGAIL (nn Nabby) Adams (John)

ALICE (nn Princess) Roosevelt (Theodore)

AMY Carter

ANNA  Harrison, Roosevelt (Franklin)

CAROLINE Kennedy

CHELSEA Clinton

DOROTHY (nn Doro) Bush (George H. W.)

ELEANOR (nn Nelly)  Wilson

ELIZA (nn Trot) Garfield, Monroe

ELLEN (nn Nellie) Grant

ESTHER Cleveland

ETHEL Roosevelt (Theodore)

FANNY Hayes

HARRIET Buchanan

HELEN Taft

IDA McKinley

JANE  Jefferson

JENNA Bush (George W.)

JESSIE  Wilson

JULIA Tyler

KATHERINE (nn Katie) McKinley

LETITIA (nn Letty) Tyler (more…)

Here is our annual Valentine’s Day blog—think of it as a love letter to  the whole nameberryite community.

Valentine’s Day certainly isn’t the only time we can think about names related to love, but it does present an opportunity to look at the theme–names that will make a child feel especially cherished.

First of all, there are those that relate most directly to the holiday and its traditional symbols:

ARROW

CUPID

DART

DOVE

HART

LACEY

ROSE (favorite flower of  Venus, the Roman goddess of love)

VALENTINA

VALENTINE

VALENTINO

Then there are the words-of-endearment names, though some of them might be wiser to use in the middle spot, as in Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Tobey Maguire’s daughter Ruby Sweetheart and Kate Winslet’s Mia Honey:

ADOREE
AMOROSA, AMOROSO
ANGEL
BELOVED
CARA
CARINA
CARITA
CARO
CHERIE
CHERISH
CORAZON
HONEY
LOVE
MIGNON (more…)

So you’ve scoured the Earth and still haven’t come up with the perfect name for your baby.  Maybe it’s time to look skyward to broaden your horizons.  There’s a whole galaxy of interesting and evocative celestial names to choose from, including those of planets and their satellites, constellations and single stars.  These range from simple human names like Faye and Helene to those carrying the romantic resonance of Greek and Roman myth.

First, some names of planets and their satellites:

AMALTHEA

ARAGO

ARIEL

ATLAS

BIANCA

CALLISTO—the second largest satellite of Jupiter, discovered by Galileo

CALYPSO

CORDELIA

CRESSIDA

DESDEMONA

DESPINA

DIONE

ELARA

GALATEA (more…)

To check out the latest trends in French baby names, we turned to a true expert, Stéphanie Rapoport, creator of the popular site meilleursprénoms.com and author of L’Officiel des Prénoms 2010.  For anyone conversant in French, the site is filled with interesting lists, charts and analysis on French baby names.

And for those whose high school French is as shaky as mine, we asked Stéphanie to give us a recap, which she’s been kind enough to do:

“Baby names in France have never been shorter: exit Sébastien, Alexandre, Frédéric, Caroline, Nathalie, Angélique—the popular names of the 1980’s.  Emma, Léa, Clara now take the limelight as the most popular feminine names, while Lucas, Enzo and Nathan dominate the masculine ranking tables.

As a result, diminutives such as Lou, Tom, Théo and Alex are doing wonders.  Few analysts would have predicted such a phenomenon in a culture which used to disdain diminutives as merely “half names.

Ending sounds are also shaping to a large extent what becomes trendy and what does not.  Fashionable feminine names tend to end in the vowel ‘a’ (Emma, Sara, Léa, Clara, Lola, Éva, Louna and Lina being in the forefront).  Then there’s the explosion caused by Lilou, a new name which has led to the discovery of Louane and renewed interest in hyphenated names such as Lou-Anne.  For boys, names with ‘eo’ vowel juxtapositions abound, as in Léo, Théo, Mathéo, also o-endings (Hugo, Enzo) and names ending in ‘an’—Nathan, Ethan, Kylian, Evan, Esteban. (more…)