Guest blogger and name lover Eleanor Nickerson, aka nameberry’s own Elea, tells us all about the exotic and gorgeous names from Cornwall, the exotic and gorgeous region in the southwest of England.

The first time I visited Cornwall was at the tender age of one. Sadly, my dad’s abiding memory of that holiday was a grouching baby grizzling all through his long-awaited sailing trip (something he has yet to fully forgive me for to this day). A few years later my parents bravely returned again, one more child in tow, and fortunately much fun and sandcastle-building ensued.

It wasn’t until several years later when I returned to the region as a fifteen year-old that I was truly able to appreciate the breath-taking beauty of the Cornish coast and countryside. In the intervening years since my last visit I had developed an avid, border-line obsessive, passion for names and their meanings. What struck me was that many houses were named instead of numbered, and these place names, along with those adorning road signs, quickly caught my attention both due to the foreign sound to English ears, and the similarity to my greatest name-love: Welsh names.

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Guest blogger Elizabeth Lindsay, aka nameberry’s very own Olivekit, was wracked with indecision over what to name her third baby girl — a dilemma followed closely by all her friends on nameberry’s message boards.  The final name choice surprised everyone, even Olivekit herself.

Baby Ooh La La (what my two-and-a-half-year-old calls her little sister), entered the world on July 23^rd, after a quick and almost painless delivery (love the epidural).  My beautiful baby girl debuted with an ear piercing scream that made the doctor laugh and say that Baby Ooh La La was the loudest baby that she had ever delivered.  She gets that from my husband.

After cleaning her up and weighing her, they handed her back to me.  We looked her over and studied her features, she looked a lot like her big sisters Olive and Kit, but with more hair.  She was perfect.

We oohed and awed over her, took a lot of pictures, and then one of the delivery nurses asked, “What’s her name?”

Crap. What followed were endless conversations about what she would not be named.

Me:  How about Phoebe, nickname Bea?

Hubby: Don’t like Phoebe.

Me:  Why not?

Hubby:  It sounds like a mean girl’s name.

Me:  What?!

(After pushing, I found out that he asked out a Phoebe once on a date in Junior High and she said no. Emphatically. Phoebe was out.)

We tried (trust me) to come up with a name. I read every book, made lists, got opinions from the wonderful ladies of Nameberry, and my loving but opinionated husband found fault with every name I came up with.  Plus, having two daughters named Olive and Kit, the pressure was on to find a name that went perfectly with theirs. Not an easy task.

I envy people who can just pick a name for their baby and that’s that.  When I was pregnant with Olive, we had a couple over for dinner and the topic of baby names came up.  Even though they weren’t expecting yet, after ruling out a couple of names, they agreed on William for a boy.    A five minute conversation and sure enough, years later, they welcomed baby William Archer.  It was never that easy for us.

Olive was going to be Courtney or Kendall until I had a dream that I was calling her by a different name and she looked at me and said, “My name is Olive, Mommy.”  I woke up and told my husband, who loved the name.  I didn’t.  I wasn’t going to name my daughter Olive.  The only Olive I had ever heard of was Olive Oyl and I don’t even like olives.   But my husband started calling her Olive toward the end of my pregnancy and when she born, Courtney Olive she became.

At my ultrasound for my second pregnancy, the baby had her back turned to us so the gender was going to be a delivery surprise.  Since I didn’t want to call him or her “it” for the next five months, we nicknamed the baby Kit because that worked for a girl or a boy. I was positive that I was having a boy.  The pregnancy was so much different than with Ollie’s and sadly, I didn’t dream up for a name for this baby, but we had a few names picked out for him.

“It’s a girl!”, the doctor proudly announced. My husband looked at me confused for a second, before we laughed and welcomed our second baby girl into our lives.  But what on Earth were we going to name her? (more…)

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the favorite girls' names on a Nameberry Message Board thread--led by the lovely Beatrix, Penelope and Clementine--and now it's time to look over at the boys' side.

The most striking result is the strong showing for the good old traditional, timeless classics, with many votes for William, Henry, Charles, James, Edward, Joseph, George, and Thomas, and a resurgence of interest in Theodore (#2!--perhaps because of the popularity of nickname Theo), Frederick, and Peter.  Does this mean that parents are still (or once again) looking at safer, more conservative choices for their sons than their daughters?  Is it somehow a reflection of the cloudy economic climate?

Some smaller trends noted: a preponderance of names starting with the vowel E–Elliot (in its various spellings), Edward, Emmett, Everett, Ethan, Ezra, Elias; and the characteristic nameberry love of some quirkier choices, several not found in the Top 500 of the Social Security list–Gideon, Amos, Emmett, Dexter, Atticus, Asa, Harvey, Callum and Cullen–and some not even on the list at all–Dashiell, Archer, Malachy, Laszlo, Ambrose.  It takes time for the rest of the world to catch up!