In honor of the Academy Award nominations announced yesterday, one of our favorite bloggers, Abby Sandel, creator of the always informative and witty appellationmountain.net, continues the tradition she started last year with boys’ red carpet names, and has again searched through the annals of Oscar history to come up with some great lists of award-worthy female winners’ and characters’ names.

Ava, Audrey, Natalie, Grace, Olivia.  Is it my daughter’s kindergarten class roster, or a round-up of Hollywood screen legends?  With so many parents turning to Tinsel Town for inspiration, no wonder I’m confused.

Despite the popularity of borrowing a name from the big screen, plenty of appealing choices remain underused.  Here’s a short list culled from Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress nominees and winners, and the characters they played, from the 1920s through today.

LEADING LADIES

Some of these are easy to imagine on a girl born today, while others might not be quite ready for a comeback.  All of them offer at least one glamorous namesake.

ANOUK

BETTE

CLAUDETTE

DOROTHY

FAYE

GLYNIS

GREER

GRETA

HALLE

HATTIE (more…)

We talk a lot about the influence of celebrity baby names on the general population of baby namers, but just how potent is that influence in actuality?  I thought it might be useful to  take a closer look at some celebrity choices and see if there was some way to quantify their impact.

Of course there are, inevitably, other factors involved in whether celebrity baby names become popular.  For instance, how high-profile is this celeb and how much has her child been seen in the media?  What are other influences surrounding  the name?  A popular character in a movie or TV show?  Is this a name that would have risen anyway, just as part of the zeitgeist or is it one that was never—or hardly ever—even heard before?  Is  it a vintage name that had been stored in the attic until it was brought out and sprinkled with some stardust?

Here are a few specific examples, giving the child’s and his or her celebrity parent’s name, the year of birth, and where the name ranked before, during and after its arrival.

AVA is an interesting case.  Previously seen as an outdated, elderlyish name, it first showed signs of a revival when used by Aidan Quinn in 1989, but he didn’t seem to have the voltage to elevate the name above the 800’s on the Social Security list.  Next came Heather Locklear, a major TV star at the time of her Ava’s birth in 1997: the name subsequently rose from #737 in 1995 to 259 in 1999.  But it was following the more highly publicized arrival of Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe’s Ava-named daughter in 1999 that the name shot up to #133 two years later—and then all the way to #5 (and probably rising) last year.

HAZEL was another name that seemed to have little potential for a comeback when chosen by Julia Roberts for one of her twins in 2004.  It wasn’t even on the list in 1997, was at 681 when little Hazel Moder was born, but had risen to 359 three years later.

IRELAND is a clear-cut example of a name created by the celebrity culture, as it was unheard of when the daughter of Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin was born in 1995—a time when place names were heating up.  By last year, there were more baby girls named Ireland than there were named Tess, Tia or Tanya.

JADEN is another proof of the Starbaby Effect.  The son of Jada Pinkett and Will Smith was given this spin on the biblical Jadon in 1998, when it ranked #328; five years later it had zoomed to #82.  Jaden’s sister Willow’s name is also on the rise.

JAYDEN.  This spelling was already quite trendy when Britney Spears and Kevin Federline picked it for their son in 2006, but the maelstrom of  publicity swirling around Britney and her boys surely contributed to this version of the name reaching its current standing of  #11. (more…)

We’re noticing a lot of V’s — as in vivacious and vibrant — popping up in cool names these days. There’s Vivienne, of course, the name of Brad and Angelina’s twin daughter, and also the name of Rosie O’Donnell’s youngest child.  Then there’s Olive, the name of Isla Fisher and Sasha Baron Cohen’s daughter; Viggo, newborn son of Taylor and Natalie Hanson; River, the son of Keri Russell; and Ever, the name of model/designer Milla Jovovich’s baby.

Name hotties with Vs in the middle include Olivia, Nevaeh, Ava, and Eva. Other rising stars (and starbabies) include Savannah, Evan, Devon, Avery, Heaven, Haven, and Violet. Many names that start with V have been out so long they’re starting to come in again: Veronica, Virginia, Valentina, Victor, and Vincent, which definitely took on a new sexy glow thanks to Entourage’s leading man Vincent Chace and real life leading man Vince Vaughn. Like Z, X, and O before it, V seems to be the cool name letter of the moment.

Some other V-inclusive names you might want to consider:

CALVIN

CLOVER

EVELYN

FLAVIA

GENEVIEVE

GROVER

HARVEY

JOVIE

MINERVA

OCTAVIA

SEVERINE

SYLVIA

WEAVER

XAVIER

And then of course there are several less obvious but still attractive names that start with V:

VALERIA

VAN

VENN

VERA

VERENA

VERITY

VERNON

VILLARD

VIRGIL

VIVECA

VIVIA