Some stylish baby names in Appellation Mountain‘s Abby Sandel’s Nameberry 9.

When I heard that Lily Allen was expecting a second child, my heart skipped a beat.

I don’t know Lily Allen.  When her first baby arrived, I had to Google search to find out that she was a singer, and I’d never heard her sing until I headed to YouTube.

The British pop starlet turned television presenter made waves with her first daughter’s name, Ethel Mary, and I’ve followed her ever since.  She didn’t disappoint with her second daughter’s name, Marnie Rose.

What would you call Allen’s style?

I’m thinking “So Retro it Hurts.”  She chooses great names that few of us have the guts to use – yet.

We classify names as traditional or modern, classic or trendy.  But the truth is that everything goes when it comes names, and there are all sorts of styles and strategies to describe our approaches to naming children.

Read More

Read More

Read More

In the past few months we’ve seen some pretty eye-popping and conversation-stopping celebrity middle name choices–Saint, Seven, Bunny, Bear, for starters—which leads us to the Question of the Week:

Would you pick a middle name that’s far more extreme than one you’d use as a first?

Have you noticed this phenomenon happening more in the real world as well as in the celebrisphere?  Any examples you’d care to share?

Read More

No sooner had we declared the death of such old-style middle names as Ann, John, and Marie – mere connective tissue between the first name and the last – than we started seeing the rise of a whole new generation of undistinguished middle names.

There are now officially enough little girls with the middle name Rose, thank you very much, and so too have we heard an awful lot of Grace, James, Claire, Lee, and Rae for girls, Ray for boys.

Granted, middle names are not as important as first names and may be rarely used after the birth announcements are printed.  But that’s no reason to default to whatever’s easiest.  In fact, the middle can be the perfect place to use a name that’s more meaningful and distinctive than one you dare put in first place.

Here, some places to find distinctive middle names:

– HONOR THY MOTHER, THY FATHER, AND THY GREAT-UNCLE – If your family is barging into the baby-naming act, make peace by using a family name in the middle.  My husband and I used both grandmothers’ names as middle names for our daughter, for instance, and revived a great-great-grandpa’s distinguished but eccentric name as our older son’s middle name.

Read More