Max, the name of both the child hero and the young actor who plays him in Where The Wild Things Are, is one of the hottest boys’ names these days.

Max can stand on its own or may be a short form of the ancient Roman name Maximus, which means “greatest,” or of Maximilian or Maxwell.  It’s one of the down-to-earth cigar-chomping grandpa names last popular a hundred years ago and enjoying a huge revival now.  Like brothers Sam and Jake, Max is unpretentious and friendly but also sounds cool.

Celebrities led the way in launching the revival of the name, starting in the late 70s and early 80s.  Stars who are the parents of now-grown kids named Max include Dustin Hoffman, Henry Winkler, Steven Spielberg, and Nora Ephron & Carl Bernstein.

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Nameberry intern and guest blogger Danielle Miksza loves all things vampire, including the strange and wonderful world of vampire baby names.  She enlightens us on the options.

Vampires seem to be everywhere these days: in books and movies, on television and the internet, even occasionally living next door.  As a twenty year-old who believes Halloween should be declared a national holiday, I can’t help but be consumed by the vampire craze.

One reason for my vampire obsession is that they are portrayed as dark and lonely creatures nobody quite understands.  As an only child, I was often lonely growing up.  I did odd things such as talk to myself or giggle at absolutely nothing.  People were a bit unnerved by me and kept their distance.  So yes, when I read about a vampire feeling like an outcast from the rest of the world, I have an idea of what that feels like.

More reasons for my vampire fanaticism: I stay up all night; I hate the sunlight, and garlic does not agree with me. Who knows? I could be a bit of a vampire myself.

Once you look past the fangs and blood lust, vampires are actually quite attractive. Who could resist a guy with incredible strength, gorgeous eyes, pointy yet very white teeth, and a handsome name? Stephenie Meyer gave us girls one of the greatest gifts of all in her series Twilight: Edward Cullen. Just the thought of that immortal makes me light-headed. He’s rich. He’s gorgeous. And he’s telepathic. How often do you come across guys like that?

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When Henry was chosen as the #1 favorite boy’s name on the collective 5-star lists of the nameberry community, I was somewhat surprised and yet somewhat not.  Because in many ways Henry is the perfect boy’s name—as classic and historic as James and John and William –yet with a quirkier edge that makes it seem modern, and even hip.

Henry has a lot going for it.  Let us count the ways:

HENRY IS POPULAR, WELL-LIKED, BUT NOT EPIDEMICALLY TRENDY.

At #78 on the Social Security list last year, Henry was given to fewer than 4,000 boys across the country.  It was much more commonly heard in the past, having been #10 in 1900, 12 in the 1910s, 18 in the twenties, 25 in the thirties, then dipping to a low of 146 in 1994, after which it started its edge back up.

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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…)

Some of you know that I have another writing life as a novelist: Babes in Captivity and Suburbanistas are two of the five novels I’ve published.   One of my novel-writing mentors was the mystery writer Elizabeth George, who taught me that a novel begins with the creation of its characters.  And the characters start with their names.

The right name is essential for building the other qualities that will make a character come alive on the page, George believes (and I believe too).  When you’re working on a piece of fiction — and I know some of you are interested in names primarily as writers, not parents — and the story or book just isn’t coming together, sometimes the problem is that your character has the wrong name.

I decided that might be the problem with my new novel, which I’ve been laboring over for three years now.  One of my three main characters, a flower child whose role in the story unfolds in the late 1970s, was named Lily.  But I wanted her to be tougher than that, I decided: a scrappy tomboy fighting her way through the world.

And so I changed her name to Billie.

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