Clearly, parents today are giving a lot more thought to their children’s middle names than their own parents did.  Long gone are the automatic connective choices like Lee and Lynn, Beth and Bruce;  more likely now might be something more imaginative like Maeve or West—or Sebastian or Story—or Mom’s maiden or another family name.

For some people, the reasoning behind this is to give the child an additional option for later in life.  It works both ways: either he could switch his classic William for his jazziermiddle  Jasper, or she could opt for using her traditional, grown-up Elizabeth middle name over the less sophisticated Poppy.

It turns out that a surprising number of celebrities have done just that—chosen to use their middle as their marquee moniker.  Sometimes it was to drop a wimpy appellation for a more stylish one (Eldred for Gregory, Orvon for Gene), sometimes because a name was too common at the time (Mary, John, James) and the middle had more character (Farrah, Orson, Montgomery), sometimes maybe because probably just seemed cooler to be Brad than Bill.

As a result, some of the most stand-out celebrity names –Evangeline, Reese, Rihanna, Ashton and Jude—started out in second place on the birth certificate.  Here are some of the most prominent–And note that the last names given aren’t necessarily the ones they were born with.

GIRLS

Kathryn BRIDGET (Moynahan)

Lily CLAUDETTE (Colbert)

Mary DEBRA (Winger)

Nicole EVANGELINE (Lilly)

Audrey FAITH (Hill)

Mary FARRAH (Fawcett)

Dorothy FAYE (Dunaway)

Deborah HUNTER (Tylo)

Mary KATHLEEN (Turner)

Olive MARIE (Osmond)

Holly MICHELLE (Phillips)

Carole PENNY (Marshall)

Laura Jean REESE (Witherspoon)

Robin RIHANNA (Fenty) (more…)

Celebrity baby names can reflect or even launch naming trends in the general population.  Here, some of the hottest celebrity baby names and trends we see heating up right now:

Babies Named After Heavenly Bodies, Objects, And/Or Beings –

SERAPHINA – Ben and Jen

MARS – Erykah Badu

LUNA – Constance Marie

Stella LUNA – Ellen Pompeo

Scarlet STAR – Melanie Chisholm & Eddie Murphy

CIEL (French for sky) – Niki Taylor

Aven ANGELICA – Matthew Settle

Journey JETT – Jenna Jameson

JETT Hamilton – Jill Scott

Petal Blossom RAINBOW – Jamie Oliver

Babies with Animal Names

BIRDIE West – Maura West

SPARROW James Midnight – Nicole Richie and Joel Madden

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With 2009 name fads, from Marley to Miley, safely behind us, what do we see as the hottest trends in baby names for the year ahead  Here, nameberry’s top 15 predictions for 2010 baby names:

BIGGEST BIG PICTURE TREND: ECONOMICAL NAMES

In this era of tighter budgets and darker outlooks, 2010 baby names will be getting both shorter and more light-hearted.  We see a trend toward nickname names ahead.  For boys, these are economical one-syllable names: Bob, Joe, Gus, Hal, Hank, Max,.  Such short forms – in every sense of the phrase are stylish and getting more so in Europe, with Jack the number one name in England, Tom tops in France, Bas and Sem popular in the Netherlands.

For girls, the nickname trend adds an “ie” onto the end of every name: Gracie, Ellie, Evie, Maisie, Josie.  Trendlet: boys’ nicknames – Lou, Charlie, Sam, Frankie – for girls.

NEWEST RETRO TREND

We predict the revival of serious, no-frills names that haven’t been considered for babies in several generations: Adele, Alice, Dorothy, Edith, Evelyn, Florence, Lenore, Louise, and Marion for girls; Arthur, Frank, Harold, Harvey, Martin, Raymond, Victor, Vincent, Walter, Warren for boys.  Having trouble imagining such sober names on cute little kids?  We said the same thing about Moses and Matilda a handful of years ago.

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Since I happen to be  married to someone who was born and raised on the island of Guernsey–yes, the Guernsey of cows and Potato Peel Pie Society fame–I’ve spent quite a bit of family time there and, out of curiosity, also check the Guernsey Press site online fairly regularly–particularly the names in the birth announcements, of course.

Even though Guernsey is closer to the French shore of the English channel than the English, and many of the familes have surnames like Le Maitre and Vaudin (my mother-in-law’s maiden name), and my husband Chris grew up with boys named Marcel and Henri, very few modern parents there are using Gallic first names for their babies, so that these birth announcements aren’t all that different from those in the English papers.

The names might be similar, but the combinations of firsts and middles strike me as very different from what would be found in the US.  Poppy Ina?  Lexi Lu?  Jake Max?

Here are some of the most recent:

GIRLS

AMIE JUNE

AYLA JANE

BROOKE ELLEN

CHLOE ROSE

ELIZA MOLLY

EMILY ALICE DIANA

GRACIE ANYA

HARRIET DAISY

HOLLIE ELOISE

KATHERINE ‘KITTY’ WILLOW

KITTY ELIZABETH

KYA

LEXI LU

LILY MAE (more…)

It’s no longer just foreign royals who are using multiple middle names for their babies.  More and more parents–both celebrity and civilian– are doubling or even tripling up, seeing it as an opportunity to widen their naming options, both in terms of honoring a namesake, or just for the sheer pleasure of choosing and bestowing an extra name or two.

One appealing possibility is that of honoring both maternal or paternal grandparents, as Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin did using all fourof their parents’ names for their children– Apple Blythe Alison and Moses Bruce Anthony. It’s also an opportunity for a Mom to use her maiden name –a venerable tradition–along with  another, hand-picked one.  This is among the positive points brought up by posters on our message boards—the fact that it allows you to use one of your favorite names along with either your maiden name or that of some other family member you might want to honor.

There are some minor downsides including possible future bureaucratic snafus down the road. Smitty wrote in a while back to say that she works in the medical field and that “When women marry and hyphenate their names or keep their maiden and middle names and add their married names, the computer system we have can freak out.” –and forms like Social Security limit you to one middle only,  in effect depriving a person of recording her full name (so you might want to consider the order of the middle names quite carefully.)    (more…)