Journalist and New York City mom Laura Dunphy reports that the pressure is on for Gotham parents to choose baby names that are more creative, more unusual, cooler than those anyone else is using. But no matter how hard you try, you still might not make it.

Ah, New York, New York.  If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.  And if you can name your baby here without needing therapy or Xanax, then I applaud you.

That’s because like everything else in NYC, baby naming is intense.  If most people think naming children is a pleasant activity, like badminton or a picnic, Manhattanites treat it as a competitive sport, like rugby or bond trading.

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Most of us, as kids, lived in a world colored by crayons, and for those of us fascinated by words and names, those assigned to the different hues in the big 64-crayon Crayola box were particularly evocative.  I can still remember, as a little girl,  being intrigued by such mysterious names as Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber.

These memories were reawakened by a communique from our inspired creative contributor Nephele, when she wrote:

“Perhaps one of the fondest childhood memories shared by many of us is that of opening up a fresh box of crayons.  What a joy to the senses it was to experience that clean scent of wax and the beautiful sight of those colorful rows of pointed tips awaiting one’s creative process.  Adding to the delight was the fact that one’s crayons bore wonderful individual names on their wrappers, such as “Periwinkle” and “Cadet Blue.”  With such names, how could a child not help but personify her crayon friends?

‘Crayola’ was synonymous with ‘crayon’  in my childhood days, as it pretty much is today.  The bonus for today’s children is that the Crayola company now includes, along with English, both French and Spanish language versions of their crayon names on the wrappers of each crayon–providing even more name choices for one’s crayon companions!”

Here is Nephele’s list of crayon names which might also make pleasing names, with a few additions by Nameberry:

ALMENDRA (Spanish, “Almond“)

CERISE

CERULEAN

FERN

FUCHSIA (more…)

The Harry Potter books are a name lover’s dream, author J. K. Rowling being probably the most prolific and creative character namer since Charles Dickens.  Her seven Harry Potter books have an enormous cast of magical wizards and wizards-in-training, witches, ghosts, Hogwarts School professors and students–most of them named with great gusto, humor, and a genius for witty wordplay and cleverly engineered misspellings, interweaving Greek and Latin roots with skill and panache.  Like Dickens, Rowling takes delight in matching name to nature and employs symbolism as well, as for instance calling Harry’s good and pure mother Lily.

A favorite trick of hers is drawing characters’ names from the realm of astronomy, thus producing such celestial names as:

ANDROMEDA –a constellation in the Northern sky

BELLATRIX — a star in the constellation Orion

CASSIOPEIA — another constellation in the Northern sky

DRACO  — a constellation known as Draco the Dragon

LUNA  –  the moon

POLLUX  — one of the twin stars of Gemini

SCORPIUS –  a constellation representing a scorpion

SIRIUS   — the brightest star in the night sky (more…)

There’s no doubt that middle names have been taking on increasing  importance in the hearts and minds of  baby namers.  They’ve stepped up from the inconsequential connectives –especially for girls–of a generation or two ago to full co-starring roles on the birth certificate.  For many, it’s a welcome opportunity to honor a family member, preserve a maiden name, or use as a solid alternative for their child to possibly choose to use later on.

But for others, it’s place to be whimsical, to salute a creative hero, to use a favorite word or nature name they wouldn’t dare to put in first place.  For examples of how this works, we need only to look to the stars, those beacons of extreme–if not bizarre– baby naming.  So here are some nature, namesake, word and lovey-dovey endearment middle names they have used, followed by the name of the celebrity parent who chose it and their child’s first name:

NATURE NAMES

BEAR  (Anthony Kiedis’s Everly)

CRICKET  (Amy Locane’s Paige)

HUCKLEBERRY  (Kimberly Williams & Brad Paisley’s William)

PINE  (Simon Le Bon’s Tallulah)

PLUM  (Moon Unit Zappa’s Matilda)

RAIN  (Brooke Burke & David Charvet’s Heaven)

RAINBOW  (Jamie Oliver’s Petal Blossom)

TULIP  (Rebecca Romijn & Jerry O’Connell’s Charlie Tamara)

NAMESAKES–real and fictional

COLTRANE  (Natascha McElhone’s Rex)

HENDRIX  (Donnie Wahlberg’s Elijah)

ICARUS  (Lucy Sykes’ Titus Jasper)

KAFKA  (Tommy Lee Jones‘ Victoria)

KIPLING  (Kim Raver’s Leo)

MADONNA  (Geri Halliwell’s Bluebell)

MARS  (Sofia Coppola’s Romy)

MOWGLI  (Ashlee Simpson & Pete Wentz’s Bronx)

ZHIVAGO  (Nia Long’s Massai) (more…)

During the hundred times you’ve watched The Wizard of Oz, you may have noticed that it isn’t a particularly fertile source of interesting names.  There’s Dorothy of course, and Aunty Em and Uncle Henry, plus the farm names of Dorothy’s companions on the Yellow Brick Road–Hunk, Hickory and Zeke–and the nasty, bike-pedaling Miss Elvira Gulch.

But it happens that this was just the first in a series of Oz books.  L. Frank Baum himself wrote 13 more, with titles such as The Patchwork Girl of Oz and Rinkitink in Oz, and then other authors stepped in to bring the number up to 40.  Just looking at the Baum creations alone, you enter a wonderland of wildly inventive appellations of the Princess-Fluff/Professor Nowitall variety–not particularly baby-appropriate– (more…)