Here is another excerpt from our latest book, Beyond Ava & Aiden: The Enlightened Guide to Naming Your Baby

In Colonial times, as many as twenty percent of the slaves in the Carolinas bore African names, most notably day names, which relate to the day of the week on which the person was born. The West African day names, often translated to English cognates such as Judy for Juba or Joe for Cudjoe, are:

SUNDAY – QUASHEBA (female); QUASHEE (male)
MONDAY — JUBA; CUDJOE
TUESDAY –BENEBA; CUBBENAH
WEDNESDAY — CUBA; QUACO
THURSDAY – ABBA; QUAO
FRIDAY — PHEBE/PHIBBI; CUFF/CUFFEE
SATURDAY — MIMBA; QUAME/KWAME

Names were also chosen that signified months of the year, seasons and holidays. Some of these that have survived on the roles include: MONDAY, FRIDAY, CHRISTMAS, EASTER, MARCH and JULY.

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Many parents — more and more, it seems — wait until the baby arrives to settle on a  name.  Some want to see what it looks like and try to gauge its incipient personality (not always easy), and some want to tie it into the circumstances of the baby’s birth–a practice seen in a number of earlier cultures.  This could be the season of arrival–Summer or Autumn–or the month, as in June or January, or the day of the week, as in Sunday Rose Kidman Urban (actually born on a Monday).

Another option is commemorating the time of day or night of the baby’s arrival.  There are any number of names associated with sun and moon gods and goddesses, as well as names whose meanings refer to day and night, stars, dawn, sun and moon,  in both western and  eastern cultures. Some of them worth considering are:

DAY NAMES

ADOUR — African, meaning born at dawn
AFTERNOON
ALBA –means dawn in Italian and Spanish
ALTAN — Turkish, meaning dawn
ANATOLE — French, meaning dawn
APOLLO –Greek sun god
AROON — Thai, meaning dawn
ASA –Japanese, born at dawn (in Hebrew it means healer)
AURORA –Roman goddess of dawn
CYMBELINE — Celtic, meaning sun lord
CYRUS –Persian, meaning sun
DAG/DAGMAR/DAGNY — Scandinavian, meaning day
DANICA — Slavic, meaning morning star
DAWN
DIA/DIAZ –Italian and Spanish for day
EARLY
ELIANA/ELIANE — in Greek, daughter of the sun (in Hebrew, God has answered)
ELIO/HELIO/HELIOS–related to the Greek sun god
EOS — Greek goddess of dawn
IOLA –Greek, meaning violet-covered dawn
ISHAAN –Hindu sun god
KALINDA –Hindi, meaning the sun
LARK — the bird that sings at dawn
MATIN — morning in French
MATUTA — Spanish, goddess of the morning
MORNING
NURU — Swahili, meaning born in daylight
ORIANA — like Aurora, means sunrise
PHOEBUS — another name for the sun god Apollo
RA –Egyptian sun god
RAVI — Hindu god of the sun
ROXANNE/ROXANA — Persian, meaning dawn
SAVITA — Hindi, meaning sun (among other meanings)
SABAH/SAHAR — Arabic, meaning morning
SAMSON — Hebrew, meaning sun
SHAHAR, Hebrew, meaning morning
SIRIA/SURYA –Hindi, meaning the sun (also the name of a sun god)
SOL/SOLANA –meaning the sun
SOLEIL — sun in French
SULIEN –Welsh, meaning sun
SUNNY/SUNSHINE
TALI — Hebrew, meaning dew
TARANA — meaning born during the day in (Hausa) African (also music in Persian)
THEA — Greek goddess of light and mother of the sun
ZARIA/ZARYA — Slavic, meaning morning star
ZORA– Slavic name meaning dawn
ZORAN –Serbian, meaning light of dawn

NIGHT NAMES

AJAMBO –African, meaning born in the evening
ALTAIR –the brightest star in the constellation Aquila
ANDROMEDA — a constellation
ANNIKKI — Finnish nighttime goddess
AQUILA — a constellation
ARTEMIS –Greek moon goddess
ASTA/ASTRA — meaning star
BADAR — Arabic, meaning full moon
CASSIOPEIA–a constellation
CHANDRA — Indian moon god
CYNTHIA — Greek, related to moon goddess Artemis
DELIA — another epithet of Greek moon goddess Aretemis
DEVA — Hindu moon goddess
DIANA — Roman goddess of the moon
DIMAS — Greek, meaning sunset
ESTELLE/ESTELLA/ESTRELLA –meaning star
ESTHER — Persian, meaning star
ETOILE — French word for star
HOSHI — Japanese, meaning star
ISIS — Egyptian goddess of the sky
IZAR –means star in Basque
KAMARIA –Swahili, meaning beauty of the moon
KOKO — Native American (Blackfoot), meaning night
LAILA/LEILA//LEYA/LILA –all relate to  night in Arabic
LILITH — night monster (uh-oh) in Jewish folklore
LIVANA — Hebrew, means lunar (or white)
LUNA — Italian for moon
MOON (as in Zappa)
NEOMA — Greek, meaning new moon
NISHA — Hindi, meaning night
NOVA — A star that shines very brightly (also means new and is the name of a PBS science show)
NYX — Greek, means night; name of the Greek goddess of the night
PHOEBE — another epithet for Greek moon goddess Artemis
QAMAR –Arabic, meaning moon
RAJANI — Hindi, meaning night
RAKA — Hindi, meaning full moon
RHIANNON — Welsh goddess of the moon
SELENE/SELENA — Greek goddess of the moon
SIDRA — means of the stars in Latin
STELLA — Latin for star
VEGA — falling star in Arabic

We’ve noticed a lot of expectant parents find their way to nameberry searching for winter baby names.  Nicole Richie may have sparked the thought last year when she chose one of the winter baby names for her daughter, Harlow Winter Kate.  Or perhaps it was Mad Men’s January Jones who trained the spotlight on the idea of winter names.

Names that symbolize winter (or say it straight out) might be thought of as a branch of day names, the ancient class of names used by some cultures in Africa and elsewhere based on the day or time of year a baby is born. These can denote a time of day (Morning, Afternoon), a day of the week (like Nicole Kidman’s Sunday), a month (we all know about June and August), a holiday such as Easter or Christmas, or a season, with Summer and Autumn being much more popular in the past than Winter.

Day names of all kinds are undergoing a revival as parents search for unique names that carry personal meaning. Since many of the parents flocking to nameberry right now are expecting over the winter months, this seems an appropriate topic for a nameberry poll. Of the newest, freshest choices for girls, what’s your very favorite?