We’ve looked across history and geography at the men and women whose inventions have affected our lives—in both major ways (the electric light bulb, the elevator)  and minor (the coffee filter, the crossword puzzle)—and picked those with the best baby-name potential.

And here are our top Nameberry picks of historic baby names based on those of important inventors:

Alessandro Volta–Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Gerolamo Umberto Volta was an Italian physicist who invented the battery in the nineteenth century.

Amalie Auguste Melitta Bentz –As you might have guessed from her second middle name, A.A. Melitta  Bentz invented the coffee filter.

Arthur Wynne—Liverpool-born journalist Arthur Wynne created the first crossword puzzle.  Originally called word-cross, it debuted in the New York World newspaper in 1913.

Read More

Animal names are hot these days: We mean flat-out animal names such as Bear, Fox, and Wren used for children.

But there is also a – well, can we say herd? pack? – of names that are much more subtle about their animal connections.

These names have animal meanings but you’d only know that if you read a name dictionary.  Discovering their secret animal connection is likely to prove delightful for a child given one of these attractive names.

While the list of names with animal meanings is longer than this – here’s a full list of animal names for boys and one of animal names for girls – we’ve picked some of our favorites.

Arthur – bear

This classic Celtic name has, after hitting a low in 2010, turned upward and may be heading back to the Top 20 status it enjoyed a century ago.  Cited as a possibility for the upcoming royal baby, Arthur is a kingly choice with the bonus creative nickname Art.

Read More

Read More

Just in case you’ve been agonizing about the lack of good names for boys, Appellation Mountain‘s Abby Sandel presents the case for cool boy names in this week’s The Nameberry 9.

Convinced there are no great names for boys?

Spend a few minutes on message boards and you’ll hear the laments.  “There are so many girls’ names I love, but nothing feels right for our son.”  “Girls keep stealing all of the good names!”

This week’s baby name news proves that parents are discovering plenty of great names for boys.  There’s no need to choose anything as outlandish as Rebel or as obscure as Theodule to find a stand out name for your son.

You will have to do your homework.  In a New York Daily News article announcing that Isabella and Jayden remained the top names in the Big Apple, one mom said that they’d landed on Jayden for their 2011 baby because they “were trying to do something that was different.”

Read More

Last week we took a look at the ladies in limbo, the girls’ names not old enough to fall under the Hundred Year Rule, but were most popular from the 1920s to the 1960s, to question whether any of them were eligible for resuscitation.

And now, as promised we perform the same operation on the boys’ list.

We find several differences between the genders.  For one thing, the popularity of the boys’ names tend to stretch over longer periods of time (122 years for Howard, for instance), and clearer syllabic and sound patterns tend to emerge.  In the 1920s and 1930s, for example, we see a preponderance of two-syllable names ending in the letters n and d.  By the fifties and sixties, there are lots of four and five-letter single syllable favorites—the Todds and Troys, Deans and Dales—those surfer dudes we’ve labeled ‘Beach Boys’ in our books.

Not many of these names, except for a few in the pre-1920 list, have shown significant signs of revival—once again, because they’re the names of our grandpas and great-uncles and fathers-in law—the older men in our lives, the men still smoking pipes on Father’s Day cards.

Read More