Today, Appellation Mountain‘s Abby Sandel looks back over the 459 names she’s chosen in her weekly Nameberry 9′s this year and picks out her top favorites.

Nine names per week over 51 weeks equals 459 names.  They’re classic, they’re quirky, and sometimes they’re downright strange.  But when I sat down to review a year’s worth of Nameberry posts, I realized that most of them are actually pretty wearable.

Very few of them repeat – something that surprised me, as it so often seems that a name is suddenly everywhere all at once.  Some garnered lots of positive comments while others went completely unnoticed.

My favorite comment?  “No, don’t mention THAT name.  It’s the top of our list!”  As I scrolled through the posts, there were more than a few groans of disappointment.

The best names, though, aren’t necessarily the ones that will be racing up the popularity charts.  I’m most attracted to the ones that seem novel – unlikely to catch on, but probably part of a bigger change in how we think about names.

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This week, Abby Sandel, of Appellation Mountain, outdoes herself in seeking and finding some truly novel names for The Nameberry Nine..

This week in baby name news, an actor named his second daughter after a tree. One movie brought an invented name to the English-speaking world by way of Japan. Another film started out in the imagination of a New Jersey-born novelist, took the audience to Paris, circa 1931, boosting a name that is popular throughout modern-day Europe. And an English pop star debuted a high-fashion handbag named in honor of a daughter named after a rather high-minded novel.

For every name that is clearly tied to a culture of origin – Maeve or Svetlana or Hiroshi – there is a growing pool that feels like fair game for parents from any background. This week’s names fit that mold, mostly because it is almost impossible to make them fit any one specific category. They’re global, eclectic, and stylish – just like the names that many of us are seeking for our children today.

Many of them are also shape-shifters. Is Sylvie a nature-name, a next-wave vintage appellation, or a nod to French heritage? How about Jed – is he a Biblical boy or a little wrangler? The answer is frequently yes, yes, and yes for these nine baby names in the news:

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