We were admiring the name Calliope the other day (yes, after all these years, we still love names enough to sit around and think about how much we like them) and we started thinking: What a good name for a musician to choose for her child.

Whether or not you’d name a baby after your profession in real life, it’s a fun thing to consider.

So many great occupational names are in play now, from Archer to Gardener to Sailor.

And then there are names like Calliope that connect to something related to your profession.  A landscape architect might name a daughter Flora, for instance, or a writer might choose the name Penn.

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See all our lists of cool baby names here.

Cool baby names often share a certain something: an initial (like O), an origin (like Irish), or a sound — like -er at the end.

Blame it on Jennifer and Christopher. What those two mega-popular names have in common is their unusual –er ending, which launched a name sound that holds a lot of appeal to the contemporary ear.

Dozens of the cool baby names for boys today share the –er ending, along with a handful of choices for girls. Some of these are traditional first names but more are surname-names and occupational names.

Of course, Jennifer and Christopher were not the only popular names or even the first to feature –er at their end. Long-used –er names include Peter and Alexander, other trendy 1980s choices are Amber and Heather, and widely-used popular names that end in –er include such divergent choices as Oliver and Winter, Skyler and Spencer, River and Ryker, Harper and Hunter.

And then, as happens with name trends, there are dozens of choices that are more unusual and more stylish. Among the most appealing are the traditional boys’ names that share the –er ending:

• Abner
• Casper
• Chester
• Dexter
• Eleazer

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For a number of years, when I wasn’t writing about names, I was writing about antiques and collectibles for a syndicated newspaper column.  But of course when I was thinking about antiques, I was still also thinking about names.

Looking at the field of antique furniture, for example, I found that when it came to early British cabinetmakers, the names were relatively unexciting.  George Hepplewhite. Robert Adams. Thomas Chippendale. Thomas Sheraton.  Nothing too juicy there.

But with the Early American cabinetmakers and clockmakers it was quite a different story.  Lots of antiquated Biblical names, more than one Chauncey, Ebenezer and Lemuel, a few virtue names rarely heard in modern times (Prudent, Noble), a couple of Latinate names and a Greek god—in other words a variegated picture of American Colonial and Federal era nomenclature:

Some prime examples:

• Abel Cottey
• Abiel Chandler
• Abner Toppan
• Ansel Goodwin
• Asa Holden
• Chauncey Boardman, Jerome
• Duncan Phyfe
• Ebenezer Knowlton, Tracy, Parmalee
• Elbert Anderson
• Eli Terry
• Elias Ingraham
• Elijah Booth, Sanderson
• Eliphaler Chapin
• Elisha DeWolfe, Jr
• Elnathan Taber
• Enos Doolittle
• Ephraim Haines, Downes
• Everadus Bogardus
• Garvan Carver
• Gawen Brown
• Gerrard Hopkins
• Gideon Roberts
• Heman Clark
• Hercules Courtenay

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With Labor Day upon us, it seems like the perfect moment to focus on the original pre-barbecue meaning of the holiday and celebrate hard-working occupational names.  So we’re looking back to wtoe we wrote on the subject in our book Beyond Ava & Aiden, but here focusing on the less used, fresher sounding examples, and those with less obvious meanings, so no Archer, Shepherd or Baker.

Have you noticed how many of the boys’ names climbing up the ladder end in the letters ‘er’? They sound really new and cool, but in reality a large proportion of them actually originated in medieval England as occupational surnames, when Timothy the Tanner morphed into Timothy Tanner—as if in our day Pete the Programmer became Pete Programmer. And even if a large proportion of these are trades that no longer exist in this Digital Age, and some of their meanings have been lost to time, part of their appeal as a group lies in their throwback reference to basic concepts of honest labor, adding some historical heft to their appeal, and giving them more weight than other fashionable two-syllable names.  They offer the parents of boy babies a comfortable middle ground between the sharper-edged single syllable names (Holt, Colt), and the more ornate longer names (Gregory, Jeremy) of the recent past.  Here are some of the most usable ones, together with their original, sometimes arcane, meanings.

The er-ending names

• Banner– flag bearer
• Barker –stripper of bark from trees for tanning
• Baxter– a baker, usually female
• Beamer — trumpet player
• Booker — scribe
• Boyer — bow maker, cattle herder
• Brenner — charcoal burner
• Brewster — brewer of beer
• Bridger — builder of bridges  
• Carter — cart maker or driver, transporter of goods
• Carver — sculptor
• Chandler — candle maker
• Chaucer — maker of breeches, boots or leg armor
• Collier — charcoal seller, coal miner
• Conner — inspector
• Cooper — wooden barrel maker
• Coster — fruit grower or seller
• Currier — leather finisher
• Cutler — knife maker
• Decker — roofer
• Dexter — dyer
• Draper — woolen cloth maker or seller
• Duffer — peddler
• Farrier– iron worker
• Fletcher — arrow maker
• Forester — gamekeeper, forest warden
• Foster — sheep shearer
• Fowler — hunter of wild birds
• Glover — maker or seller of gloves
• Granger — granary worker
• Harper —  harp maker or player
• Hollister — female brothel keeper!!
• Hooper —  one who makes or fits hoops for barrels
• Hopper — dancer, acrobat
• Hunter — huntsman
• Jagger — a Yorkshire name meaning peddler or carrier
• Keeler — boatman or barge builder
• Kiefer — barrel maker or overseer of a wine cellar
• Lander — launderer
• Lardner — servant in charge of the larder
• Lorimer — a spur maker
• Mercer — merchant, especially in luxury fabrics
• Miller — grinder of corn
• Nayler — maker of nails
• Parker — gamekeeper in a medieval private park
• Porter — gate keeper, carrier of goods
• Potter — maker or seller of earthenware pottery
• Quiller — scribe
• Ranger — game warden
• Rider/Ryder — cavalryman, horseman, messenger
• Sadler– saddle maker
• Salter — worker in or seller of salter
• Sayer –several meanings:  assayer of metal, food taster, woodcutter (as in Sawyer)
• Slater — roofer
• Sumner — court summoner
• Thatcher — roofer
• Tolliver — metal worker (Anglicization of the italian Taliaferro)
• Turner — turner of wood on a lathe
• Webster — weaver, originally female
• Wheeler– wheel maker

 Other occupational names

• Baird– minstrel or poet  
• Beaman– beekeeper
• Chaplin– clergyman
• Farrar– blacksmith, metalworker
• Fisk– fisherman
• Reeve– bailiff, chief magistrate
• Smith– metal worker, blacksmith
• Steele– a steel worker
• Todd– a fox hunter
• Travis– gate keeper, toll collector
• Ward– watchman, guard
• Wright– carpenter, joiner

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