Journalist and New York City mom Laura Dunphy reports that the pressure is on for Gotham parents to choose baby names that are more creative, more unusual, cooler than those anyone else is using. But no matter how hard you try, you still might not make it.

Ah, New York, New York.  If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.  And if you can name your baby here without needing therapy or Xanax, then I applaud you.

That’s because like everything else in NYC, baby naming is intense.  If most people think naming children is a pleasant activity, like badminton or a picnic, Manhattanites treat it as a competitive sport, like rugby or bond trading.

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From the time we wrote our very first name book, we’ve both been totally charmed by the unique verve and spirit of  names ending in the letter ‘o’.  And, over time, our love for them has only increased.  We’re glad to see that more and more people seem to be agreeing with us; lately there’s been an infusion of newly popular choices–and, surprisingly, this is beginning to be true for girls as well as boys.

Here are some of the currently coolest boys’  names, many of then reflecting the ever-growing globalization of baby names:

ALDO, ARLO & ARNO

BRUNO

COSMO & COSIMO

ENZO

HORATIO

HUGO

INDIO & INDIGO & INIGO

LASZLO

LEO

MATEO /MATTEO

MILO

ORLANDO

OTTO

RIO

ROCCO

ROMEO & VALENTINO — two choices previously considered uberly-romantic, now sudden celebrity faves

THEO

VIGGO

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When the mother of all hipster mommy bloggers, Heather Armstrong aka Dooce, named her second daughter Marlo, all I could think was…..Marlo? Really?  You’d have to work hard to find a less hipsterish name, and Dooce herself has said she was inspired to choose the name by its original bearer, That Girl actress and Free to Be You and Me author Marlo Thomas, not exactly a hipster icon.

So I was thinking about how true hipsters would by definition search for names that were not pegged as hipster, when I came across a nameberry forum launched by the ever-brilliant Susan Chesney, called Outhip the Hipsters.

“What names are even more edgy and nerdy-cool than the Hipster List?,” Susan writes in the introduction to her thread.  Rule #1, says Susan: The names on the Outhip the Hipsters list cannot be on the Hipsters list or be enthusiastically endorsed on Nameberry.

Over the next 50 posts, dozens of the nameberry resident geniuses added their own entries to the Outhip the Hipsters list.  I’ve reclassified many of the name suggestions below, plus added some of my own.

Here, names that may Outhip the Hipsters:

RISING HIPSTER NAMES

The choices below are rising quickly through the hipster ranks and may soon be so hip they’re not hip anymore.

girls

Agatha

Dorothy

Freya

Fuchsia

Gwen

Louise

Magdalene

Mildred

Muriel

Pauline

Ramona

Roxanne

Ruth

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One thing we learned when we wrote about hipster baby names is that nobody wants one.  Many people were horrified if they found their favorite names — or worse, their actual children’s names — on our list of hipster names.   No matter how much they’d loved the name before, they immediately went in search of something new, something different, something with a bit less of the whiff of hipsterdom about it.

Well, okay.  We can dig grok understand that.  It’s intrinsically uncool to be seen as trying hard to be cool, even if you’re doing so by deliberately being uncool.  Which, of course, is uncool.

We wrote about this before, in our exploration of names that hit the baby name sweet spot between too cool and not cool enough.

Today we look at how to downshift the hipster factor in some of the prime suspect names.  Making a name less hip might mean making it more classic or plainer, but it also might mean making it more unusual, less obviously stylish.  If you truly want to pull back from the edge of cool, consider making the following swaps.

Instead of Ada, try AIDEEN

Instead of Annabel, try ANNE

Instead of August, try GUSTAV

Instead of Butch, try BUDDY

Instead of Delilah, try SALOME

Instead of Edie, try EDITH

Instead of Hugo, try HUGH

Instead of Iris, try IRENE

Instead of June, try JANE

Instead of Kingston, try KINGSLEY

Instead of Lennon, try JOHN

Instead of Lulu, try LOUISE

Instead of Mae, try MARY

Instead of Miles, try BASIE  (I think Basie is probably pretty hipster too, but I just like it better)

Instead of Minnie, try MINETTE

Instead of Otis, try OMAR

Instead of Piper, try FIFER

Instead of Ray, try RALPH

Instead of Ruby, try RUTH

Instead of Talullah, try TABITHA

Instead of Theo, try TED

Any more bright ideas?  We know you have some…..

Back in the Gay Nineties–the 1890s, that is–there was a major craze for flower names, with Rose, Daisy and Lillie high on the popularity lists. Concurrent with that, there was a mini-fad for jewel names, as in Ruby, Pearl and Opal. Today, history does seem to be repeating itself. Not only are we seeing a name garden blooming with Roses, Lilys and Daisys, but also more exotic blossom names like Jasmine, Violet, Lilac, Poppy, Azalea, Lotus, Aster, and Zinnia. And there are signs of a jewel name revival as well, more colorful than the dated Crystal and Diamond: Ruby is a hot hipster name, Pearl was picked by SNLer Maya Rudolph, and Opal is the name of kid characters in several recent movies.

In the jewelry case, there’s a wide variety of both common (Coral, Amber) and unusual names. First, there are the modern birthstone names (others were used in the past), which could be tied to the baby’s birth month:

GARNET for January
AMETHYST for February
AQUAMARINE for March
DIAMOND for April
EMERALD for May
PEARL for June
RUBY for July
PERIDOT for August
SAPPHIRE for September
OPAL for October
TOPAZ (yellow) or CITRINE for November
TOPAZ (blue) or TURQUOISE for December

And here are some others that might be up for consideration:

ADULAIA
ALAMANDINE/ALMANDINE
AMBER
BERYL
CARNELIAN
CORAL
GEUDA (pronounced gay-oo-la)
HYACINTH ( a flower AND a gem name)
IRIDOT (an old name for opal)
JACINTH
JADE
JASPER
LAPIS LAZULI
LARIMAR
MATARA
ONYX
QUARTZ
VIOLANE
ZIRCON

And then there are some interesting foreign variations. Bear in mind that since Margaret means “pearl,” any one of its many offshoots could be considered a gem name–I’ve just included a couple..

AMBRA (Italian for amber)
BIJOU (French for jewel)
BIYU (Chinese for jasper)
EMERAUDE (French for emerald)
ESME (Persian for emerald)
ESMERALDA (Spanish for emerald)
FAIRUZ/FAIRUZA (Arabic for turquoise)
GEMMA (Italian for gem)
GIADA (Italian for jade)
GRETEL (German for pearl)
GRIET (Dutch for pearl)
JUMANA (Arabic for pearl)
MARIT (Scandinavian for pearl)
PENINA (Henrew for pearl)
PERLA (Spanish and Italian for pearl)
PERLE (French for pearl)
PHAILIN (Thai for sapphire)
RURI (Japanese for emerald
SAPPHIRA (Greek for sapphire–in Hebrew it’s spelled with one ‘p’)
SHINJI (Japanese for pearl)
ULA (Celtic for gem of the sea)