Best Baby Names: Beyond the Top 1000

Every year when the SSA baby name data is released, the big news stories are all about the names at the very top of the list: which have made it to that hallowed #1 spot, which have entered the Top 10 or Top 100, and which have made the most impressive leaps up the charts over the past 12 months.

But while it’s fun to follow trends and try to predict which names will make the cut, when it comes to actually choosing a name for a real-life baby, the most common requirement for the best baby names that we see from expectant parents who come to our Forums for help is “unusual, but not weird”.

In 2018, it took 206 births for a male name to feature in the Top 1000 (Benton, Coleman, Markus) and 259 births for a female name to register (Elina, Kimora, Maliah, and also Paityn at #1001).

So, we’ve looked to those names that were used 200 times or fewer last year — picking out 400 of our favorites, sorted by sex and number of births. These names represent a wide variety of sounds, styles and sources, but they’re all widely familiar, straightforward in terms of spelling and pronunciation, on-trend… and yet still extremely uncommon. Which are your favorites?

151-200 births

• Adler

  
• Ansel

  
• Anton

  
• Arrow

  
• Banks

  
• Bastian

  
• Bellamy

  
• Boaz

  
• Callahan

  
• Campbell

  
• Cillian

  
• Clarence

  
• Dimitri

  
• Eamon

  
• Edmund

  
• Eliezer

  
• Evander

  
• Everest

  
• Finnian

  
• Foster

  

101-150 births

• Ambrose

  
• Amias

  
• Andreas

  
• Auden

  
• Beck

  
• Cal

  
• Cassian

  
• Cedar

  
• Cormac

  
• Dashiell

  
• Elio

  
• Emil

  
• Ender

  
• Ewan

  
• Finnick

  
• Garrison

  
• Gray

  
• Hollis

  
• Irving

  
• Ishmael

  

51-100 births

• Angus

  
• Augustin

  
• Basil

  
• Baxter

  
• Blair

  
• Bram

  
• Calder

  
• Calix

  
• Chester

  
• Cy

  
• Eben

  
• Emrys

  
• Floyd

  
• Galen

  
• Holt

  
• Ignatius

  
• Indiana

  
• Jovan

  
• Jules

  
• Kainoa

  

50 births and below

• Adlai

  
• Aldous

  
• Aleph

  
• Amory

  
• Antonin

  
• Aurelian

  
• Balthazar

  
• Barnaby

  
• Bay

  
• Bowman

  
• Bruin

  
• Calloway

  
• Caspar

  
• Cato

  
• Clancy

  
• Clement

  
• Coltrane

  
• Cosmo

  
• Cyprian

  
• Darcy