The big news in baby names this week has been the Most Popular Names 2012: Top 1, Top 10, Top 100, Top 1000.

But swimming just below the surface — not quite on the radar but not truly off, either — are dozens of more unusual baby names poised to find wider favor….or dropping from view.

Many Nameberry favorites exist in this limbo of baby names, including choices such as Aurelia and Wren for girls that missed making it into the Top 1000 by a single point.

Of course, that may bring relief rather than disappointment to many parents.  If you want to name your baby Magnolia or Clementine, Bishop or Langston — or already have — you may tremble on surveying the new Top 1000, hoping your favorites stay off the list.

We looked below the Top 1000 for girls and boys and found those names within 50 points of the cutoff that we felt were heading back into style, along with those sailing off into the sunset.

In raw numbers, 251 girls received the Number 1000 name Katalina while 197 boys were named Number 1000 boys’ name Dangelo.  The numbers after each name below represent the number of children given that name in 2012.

One note on the names we say are Heading Out: Some of these may appeal to parents in search of a name with Geek Chic or an unusual classic.  Hello, baby Ralph!  Or….dare I suggest….baby Pamela?

Here, the names just under the Top 1000 coming into style and heading out:

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by Eleanor Nickerson of British Baby Names

Manx is one of the six Celtic languages that hail from the British isles.  It is the native language of the Isle of Man, an island uniquely situated between the coasts of Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales. From its highest point, Snaefell, you can even see all four countries on a clear day.

Over the centuries it has passed from and between Welsh, Viking, English and Scottish rule, though now has its own democratic parliament. The Manx language — a close relative of Irish and Scot Gaelic — was spoken up until the 1970s, when its last native speaker died. However, it is now beginning to see some signs of revival.

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by Isadora Vega of  Bewitching Baby Names

I have found a catalogue of old birth certificates of Romani (Gypsy) children with their parent’s names. My understanding is that all of these records are from England with births throughout the 1800′s and early 1900′s. So many of the names are what I would expect from that place and time: Kate, Henry, Oliver, Matthew, Eliza, Sarah, James, Benjamin, Annie, Mary, Charlotte, Robert, Thomas…you get the idea.  But here, I’m paying special attention to the glittery bits. There are some here that I can genuinely say that you’ve probably never seen before.

Keep in mind that these are from England only. There are many more unusual names from Gypsies in Spain, Turkey, Italy, Hungary, Germany, etc.

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by Kelli Brady of NameFreak!

Wentworth Miller, the actor from the former hit show Prison Break, has a very distinctive name. He is a third, after his father and grandfather, and he may share his name with a few others in the world, but his first name is by no means a mainstream one. Jane Austen fans recognize it immediately, and the fact is the three Wentworth Millers were named after the hero of her novel Persuasion, Captain Wentworth. According to IMDB, it was his great-grandmother’s idea, and what a great one it was. Such formal names may not be obviously considered as first names, but why not branch out?

Wentworth has a deep history as a surname in England and has a meaning of “pale man’s settlement” or “village of the white people.” In Old English, it can be drawn from the words for “winter” and “enclosure.” Ancestry.com writes that it could have referred to a settlement only inhabited in the winter. It is also a place name. We can only guess what drew Miss Austen to the name, but no matter what that was, Wentworth was assigned to a character who became the inspiration for a baby boy’s name.

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Angela Mastrodonato, creator of the trend-watching blog Upswing Baby Names, will be a regular contributor to our Bonus Blog.  Today she looks at girls’ names with a new twist at the end.

There’s one vowel that’s found at the end of seemingly every girl name. That vowel, of course, is the A. Today the focus is on girl names ending in a different vowel– the incredible I.

The most popular ends-in-i name for the moment is Naomi, an Old Testament name long popular in the Jewish community, which is at an all-time popularity peak. Naomi broke the top 100 for the first time in 2010, and has gradually reached #93 for 2011 (the most recent year Social Security name data is available).

Another ends-in-i name that has seen recent success is Maci, which has dramatically ascended the charts. After spending a decade in the bottom top 1000, Maci achieved Top 200 status within a short two-year span, probably thanks to being the name of a teen mom featured on MTV reality shows.

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