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Once more we turn to our buzzing message boards for Question of the Week inspiration.  This time it’s a topic posted by irisrose, and it’s this:

What interesting names have you spotted out and about in the real world recently?

Already, berries have spied such intriguingly unusual choices as Cairo, Eero, Panama, Juniper, Acacia and Lucerne. 

How about you?  What cool new names have you heard at your neighborhood playground or playgroup?  What have you spotted on birth announcements or elsewhere?

Have you discovered a name you’ve never come across before and would actually consider using?

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We’ve obviously been spending too much time in the depths of nameberry, checking out which names our visitors have been checking out.

And while Finn and Charlotte are the most-searched names for the first nine months of the year, and while we recently brought you our own nameberry Top 100 Baby Names 2010 for both boys and girls, we know some of you still want more.

What’s number 101, for instance?  Which names are flying below the official nameberry radar, not attracting enough views to make our 2010 most popular names lists, but still attracting thousands of views?

Here’s a selection.  This group does not include all the names right below the official Top 100, just those we found the most interesting.

There are lots of unusual and intriguing choices here, but for nameberry, that’s normal.

girls

• Agnes
• Ainsley
• Amelie
• Amity

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A lot of people use the term unique baby names when what they really mean is unusual baby names.  Names such as Romeo, Romilly, and Roxana may be distinctive, attractive, and uncommon, but they’re hardly unique.

But what about those names that truly are unique, as in one-of-a-kind?

Along with checking out which names were most popular on nameberry so far this year, we took a look at the names that were searched just once last quarter – nameberry’s own truly unique baby names.

Of course, there were many more unique baby names on nameberry, but these are our picks for the cream of the seldom-searched.

Might one be right for your truly unique baby?

girls

• Abelia
• Adalie
• Adara

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Looking for boys’ names that feel contemporary and stylish but that you won’t hear coming and going?  Here are our picks of unusual boys’ names – used for fewer than 100 boys, but at least 50 (those borders were picked to keep the collection manageable) – that are in step with today’s fashions.

It’s not so surprising, for the most part, that these names are used for so few boys.  And we don’t expect most of them to make huge leaps in popularity.  The few exceptions we think we’ll hear considerably more of in years to come: Wiley and Wylie, Ford, Fox, Lazarus, Chester, and West.

But we think any one of these unusual boys’ names would sound perfectly appropriate for a modern baby boy.  If you really want a name that’s different, look no further.

For more choices, see our complete list of boys’ names used for five or more babies in 2009.

The first group are traditional (more or less) first names. The number represents how many boys received the name last year.

• Wiley, 99 (and Wylie, 69)
• Adair, 93
• Sky, 93
• Aurelio, 92
• Ford, 92
• Fox, 91

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