Alternatives to Arlo

Oslo, the capital city of Norway, makes for an intriguing new place name, especially with its bookended O's, as in Otto. One Berry has already used it and we predict others will follow.

Otis has real appeal for parents attracted to its catchy O initial and combination of strength and spunk. The appealing hero of the British TV show Sex Education has done much to propel Otis into the forefront of cool names.

Otto is cool again. Long a quintessential Old Man Name, Otto has been promoted to trending darling of adventurous baby namers.

Pascoe was popular in medieval times and is definitely deserving of revival, especially for a child born in the Easter season. Other spellings are Pasco and Pascow.

Borne by early enslaved people in America and the Caribbean who were born on Thursday. This follows the traditional West African day naming tradition.

Fairly popular a hundred years ago but out of sight now, the quirky Roscoe deserves a place on every adventurous baby-namer's long list. It joins Rufus, Roman, Remy, Romulus, and Ray as one of the R names that sound fresh again after too many years of Robert, Richard, and Ronald.

Sleek and smart, with a hint of mystique about it, Silas is a recent addition to the US Top 100. Both mythological and Biblical in origin, Silas joins the ranks of Isaiah, Atlas, Elias, and Sebastian: polished and contemporary feeling names with plenty of history.

See the popularity graph below for the name Theo? It's been heading straight uphill since 2010, when it hopped back onto the Top 1000 after a 60+ year absence.

Cool bearlike option, though Orson might be easier to embrace.

The o ending and the positive meaning in many languages makes this a winner, and with the feminine Vera making a surprise return, and the new love for the letter 'V', this becomes a name that has definite possibilities.

Its jaunty o-ending makes this name more appealing than most of its Germanic brothers, and we hope we're beyond the constant response to his name being "Where's Waldo?" The weighty reputation of writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson adds a measure of backbone to the name.

With an X at the start and an O at the end, Xeno is undeniably modern and cool. If you're looking for a derivation, it could come from either the Greek male name Xenon, meaning "foreigner"; of from Zeno, a latinized form of the Greek name Zenon, meaning "dedicated to Zeus".

Zeno, the name of two ancient philosophers, has a muscular dynamism that's lightened by its cheerful final vowel, resulting in a kind of offbeat sci-fi feel. Zeno of Citium was the founder of the Stoic school of thought, Zeno of Elea was another early, original Greek thinker, famed for his Paradoxes.