Category: Spellings, Sounds and Initials
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Okay, so maybe you’re not going to give all your children names that begin with C…..or that start with vowels or contain the lovely letter L. (Or maybe you are, and that’s okay too.)
But have you noticed a sound pattern to the names you like? You might find yourself attracted to names that contain the letter O — as I knew I was when I realized I’d given my children the O-heavy names Rory, Joe, and Owen.
Or you might love names that have the soft S sound in there somewhere, or that start with A or end with N.
And at the same time, maybe you DON‘T like names with the hard K sound or that end in the trendy -er.
In my last post, I wrote about how baby names are getting longer — with choices like Isabella and Olivia (four syllables each) trumping old-fashioned picks such as Mary and Anne.
While I was sifting through the data for that piece, I noticed something interesting. Some of the short names that were common in the past (Lynn, Lee, Leigh) haven’t really gone away. They’re just hiding within longer names.
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Biggest big picture trend: Defining Names
Why give your child a mere name when you can call him something that creates a clear and powerful identity? Our major forward-looking trend for 2015 is word names that make big statements. These may be grand names such as Titan or Royal, both recent choices of celebrities. They might be new virtue names such as Saint or Noble or badass names such as Breaker and Rowdy and Rogue. Defining names can also be nature names such as the stylish River or Sage, or cool kid names like Buzz or Lazer. These names define your child to the world -- or at least tell the world how you’d like them to be defined.
By Abby Sandel, Appellation Mountain
The stars, they’re just like us. They shop for groceries. Run out for coffee. And celebrity parents love names with vibrant, exciting letters like V, X, and Z – just like the rest of the world.
Names featuring V, X, and Z aren’t novel. One hundred years ago, parents were naming their daughters Evelyn and Virginia. Melvin, Marvin, Vernon, and Alvin were all up-and-comers circa 1914. Max, Felix, and Hazel have had good runs before, and rarities like Zenobia and Zola aren’t quite as rare as you might guess.
Even Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II – there’s that letter ‘z’ again – has a granddaughter named Zara, born all the way back in 1981.
But those letters feel almost epidemic nowadays, from favorites like Zoe and Xavier to nouveau names like Zayden and Everly.
The other day we brought you the first half of our cool one-syllable middle names; today we present those from the second half of the alphabet.
The idea: Fancy middle names might be fashionable, but sometimes what you really need is a short, sweet, yet cool middle name. Something that’s less about Big Personal Meaning and more about providing a euphonic bridge between a perhaps-complicated first name and an even-more-complicated last.
Nameberry visitors are often searching for one-syllable middle names that go beyond the run-of-the-mill Rose or James yet are equally sleek and uncomplicated. To address that need, here’s the second half of our master list of cool one-syllable middle names for both genders.
