We’re always adding new names to Nameberry, and the ten newest on the site all just happen to be for girls.

Half of these names existed on Nameberry before as variations of other names, but without commentary of their own, and the other half are new entries.  All have ancient roots though are unusual — yet usable — in modern times.

Our newest girls’ names for 2013:

Adelina

Adelina is back in the Top 1000 after an absence of nearly a century, thanks to the meteoric rise of her sister name Adeline — along with Adelaide, Adele, and Ada.  Some parents choose Adelina because they want to get to cute vintage nickname Addie, but others favor it as a slightly more unusual form of this sweet vintage girls’ name. 

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We’re always adding new names to the database, and here are Nameberry’s ten newest baby names 2013:

Sunniva — Thanks, Mom2Seven, for urging us to add the ancient saint’s name Sunniva to the Nameberry database.  Saint Sunniva was born in Ireland but fled to Norway when an invading heathen king wanted to marry her.  With her followers, she hid in a cave on a Norwegian island.  After her death, miracles on the island led to an excavation of the cave, where Sunniva‘s body was found intact.  Sunniva, pronounced SOON-ee-va, is the patron saint of Western Norway, making this a distinctive choice for a family with Norwegian ancestry.  That’s her above on a Norwegian stamp.

Swithin — Saint Swithin, whose name is also spelled Swithun, is well-known throughout Britain for his July 15 feast day, which is believed to determine the weather for the next 40 days.  The original Swithin was the bishop of Winchester, where his remains are interred in the famous cathedral.

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It’s an all girl baby names issue of Appellation Mountain‘s Abby Sandel’s Nameberry 9 newsiest names this week.

Did you hear?  Barack Obama declined to offer baby name advice.

The president hosted a fireside chat on Google+ last week.  He tackled complex, divisive topics like the environment and the economy.

But baby names?

When writer and vlogger John Green introduced his wife, Sarah, and asked Obama if he’d help them choose a name for their second child, the president passed.

Had Green asked that question on the Nameberry forums, we would have all dived in fearlessly.  What’s your firstborn’s name?  Do you have any middles picked out?

Giving baby name advice is tough.  It means sorting names into the good and the bad, or maybe the good and the less good.  Explaining why we like a name is nearly impossible sometimes, isn’t it?  Explaining what we dislike can be too easy.

This week’s news was filled with gorgeous girls’ names representing every possible style and trend, from imports to underused classics to modern discoveries.

The nine most newsworthy baby names are:

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It’s a fallacy that, in the sweet old days, baby names were conventional and “normal” — children were named Mary and John or, at the outer fringes of adventurism, Ethel and Irving.

The truth is that a century ago there were scores of invented names, names with kreeative spellings, surnames and words turned first names, gender crossovers, and trendy choices that were there today and gone — very very gone — tomorrow.

The Top 1000 list of 1913 — go here to find it — is full of such unconventional baby names: Girls named Joseph and boys (lots of ‘em) named Mary, boys named Prince and girls named Queen.

Among the most popular names are choices rarely heard today — Edna and Gladys, Elmer and Floyd — along with rising stars of the baby name world such as Ruby and Hazel, Oscar and Everett.

And then down toward the bottom of the Top 1000, below such oddities to our ears as Milburn and Mafalda, are names that seem eminently “normal,” even cool, in the modern world like Lilah and Reid, Lexie and Reese.

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