Spring baby names are a fresh bunch, and if poets and songwriters can draw inspiration from springtime, why not baby namers?  The fresh, green, uplifting season offers plenty of ideas.  So here is our annual tribute to spring baby names, starting with the name of the season and its months:

SPRING – The mid-century actress Spring Byington, who played the grandma on a television show of my youth, was one of my early influences in the world of baby naming.  I’d never heard of anybody named Spring, but the whole idea was intriguing.  If you could name a baby Spring, why not….well, just about anything else?  Still an unusual, sprightly choice, and a lot more acceptable now than it was in the 1960s.

MARCH, APRIL, and MAY – May (or Mae, or Mai for that matter) is definitely the most fashionable of these choices, lovely as a first name or a middle.  March is the only one of the three that might work for boys, and makes an adventurous first or middle for girls.  April (or Avril or Abril) feels a bit tired.

Original names from around the world that mean spring:

BAHAAR – Hindi, for girls
CAROUN – Armenian, for girls
CERELIA – of Latin origin, for girls
GEN – Japanese girls’ choice
HARUKI – Japanese for boys; Haruki Murakami is a wonderful novelist
JAREK – Slavic boys name that can stand alone or be a diminutive for any name that starts with Jar-
KELDA – Girls’ name with Norse origins
PRIMAVERA – Italian, for girls
RABIAH – Arabic girls’ name
VASANT – Sanskrit boys’ name
VERNA — another Latin girls’ choice.

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If poets and songwriters can draw inspiration from springtime, why not baby namers?  The fresh, green, uplifting season offers plenty of ideas.  There are the names of the season itself and its months, for starters:

SPRING – The mid-century actress Spring Byington, who played the grandma on a television show of my youth, was one of my early influences in the world of baby naming.  I’d never heard of anybody named Spring, but the whole idea was intriguing.  If you could name a baby Spring, why not….well, just about anything else?  Still an unusual, sprightly choice, and a lot more acceptable now than it was in the 1960s.

MARCH, APRIL, and MAY – May (or Mae, or Mai for that matter) is definitely the most fashionable of these choices, lovely as a first name or a middle.  March is the only one of the three that might work for boys, and makes an adventurous first for girls.  April (or Avril or Abril) feels a bit tired.

Original names from around the world that mean spring:

BAHAAR – Hindi, for girls
CAROUN – Armenian, for girls
CERELIA – of Latin origin, for girls
GEN – Japanese girls’ choice
HARUKI – Japanese for boys; Haruki Murakami is a wonderful novelist
JAREK – Slavic boys name that can stand alone or be a diminutive for any name that starts with Jar-
KELDA – Girls’ name with Norse origins
PRIMAVERA – Italian, for girls
RABIAH – Arabic girls’ name
VASANT – Sanskrit boys’ name
VERNA — another Latin girls’ choice.

Another possibility for a spring baby is names that mean new:

NAVIN – A Hindi name for boy
NEO – The name of Keanu Reeves’ Matrix character is used for boys and girl
NEVILLE – Stuffy French boys’ name jazzed up by Neville Brothers
NEWLAND or NEWLYN – Boys’ name Newland is most famous as the protagonist of Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence; Newlyn is a forward-looking girls’ version
NOUVEL – Shiloh Pitt’s middle name, for a French architect, can work for girls or boys
SIGNE or SIGNY – This Scandinavian girls’ name means “new victory”
XAVIER et al – This newly-hip Basque name meaning “new house” is Javier in Spanish and, for girls, Xaviera or Javiera.
ZELENKA – Czech girls’ name that means fresh and innocent

Green is another inspiration for spring baby names.  Among the names that mean or connote green, most for girls:

BERYL – Old-fashioned pale green gemstone name that’s beginning to enjoy some fresh life itself.  Berilo is the attractive Spanish male version.
CHLOE – Name meaning “young green shoot” that’s tops throughout the UK and Europe and is rising in the US as well.
EMERALD – Ultimate green gem name
JADE – Stylish and edgy choice that hasn’t really lost its gleam
MIDORI – The name of both a Japanese violinist and a green liqueur
PERIDOT – Another green gem name, for the adventurous
PHYLLIDA or PHYLLIS – Names that mean “green bough,” with Phyllida way out in front in the style race.
VERDE or VERDI – Could work for either boys or girls

Since we’ve done a lot on flower and spring nature names recently, we won’t walk the garden path again, beyond saying that names such as DAFFODIL and TULIP certainly connote spring.

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