Back in February, a topic was posted on the Girls’ Names section of our Message Boards suggesting that people list their current Top Ten favorite names for girls, and it’s been running ever since.  What’s especially nice about this for us is that  it’s given Pam and me a fascinating look into the specific likes and loves of the nameberry community.  After all, for a long time, through our books and on the site,  you’ve gotten to know our opinions on both general categories of names and specific examples–and now the tables have been turned.

And we’re so gratified to see that we’re almost universally in synch (we’ll be dealing with dislikes and ‘heresies’ tomorrow), and that for the most part you love the names we love, affirming  to us that we have the most enlightened, most thoughtful, most tasteful, group of name lovers in existence.

Proof to us was in the pudding of names that showed up most frequently on your Top Ten lists, all possessing both substance and style.  So even though the thread is still alive, I couldn’t resist tallying up the Top Names of the Top Tens to date.

The most popular three are, in order:

BEATRIX

PENELOPE

CLEMENTINE

Followed by:

WILLOW and

DELILAH, and then:

ADELINE

(more…)

Here at nameberry, we’ve been known to scrutinize trends down to a single letter (are V names in?) or syllable (la-beginnings) or sound (oo), as in Talllulah.  The other day, thinking about  the names that are emerging as as among the hottest for girls right now, I suddenly realized that several of them have something in common–and that is that they are all three-syllable names ending in the suffix ine:

ADELINE

CLEMENTINE

EMMELINE

EVANGELINE

GERALDINE

JOSEPHINE

OTTOLINE

This is a pattern that hasn’t been seen in the US for a long time–if you don’t count classics like Caroline and Madeline.  The ones that are feminizations of boys’ names, such as Geraldine and Ernestine, fell out of favor at a time when a) women didn’t want to be thought of as appendages of men even in their names, and b) the particular male names they derived from were sounding particularly fusty. 

But this doesn’t seem like such a burning feminist issue these days, when many parents are  eager to honor their dads and forefathers as namesakes for their kids of either gender.  And besides–who knows?–names like Gerald and Ernest could make a return at any time. (more…)