Boys’ Names: A New Generation

Boys’ Names: A New Generation

While girls’ names are arguably more interesting – there are more of them, with more variations, and they move up and down the popularity ladder more nimbly – boys’ names are where the real baby-naming story lies today.

Parents are virtually reinventing the genre, abandoning traditional masculine names that have ruled for centuries in favor of a new brand of names for boys.  These might be ancient names resurrected from the Bible or mythology, established surnames reconstituted as firsts, ethnic choices newly imported to our shores, or – most frequently – names invented to suit the current style.

All these different types of names yield the same result: They identify a new type of boy.  He’s decidedly masculine, yet not conventionally so.  He’s strong, yet individualistic; he nods to tradition, but doesn’t necessarily follow it.

Our sons, parents seem to be saying via these new boys’ names, are neither sissified nor the same old Dicks and Johns to be shoehorned into some outmoded macho mold.  These names herald a quiet revolution in the way parents view their little boys and, by extension, in the way they’ll raise them.

Are we putting too much stock in the power of names to affect a change in something as fundamental as gender roles?  Actually, we think it’s the other way around: The vision of gender is changing, for boys as well as girls, and the new boys’ names reflect that.

This week, we’ll look at some of the new masculine choices moving up the popularity list.  The first group are the old names made new again.

Asher

Atticus

August

Caleb

Cyrus

Ezra

Felix

Garrett

Gideon

Isaac

Isaiah

Jadon (though it’s used less often in this original form than as the nouveau Jaden, Jayden et al)

Josiah

Levi

Maximus

Moses

Nehemiah

Odin

Orion

Roman

Romeo

Sebastian

Solomon

Titus

Tobias

Tristan

Zachariah

Tomorrow: Surname names, real and synthetic, for the new brand of boy.

About the Author

Pamela Redmond

Pamela Redmond

Pamela Redmond is the cocreator and CEO of Nameberry and Baby Name DNA. The coauthor of ten groundbreaking books on names, Redmond is an internationally-recognized baby name expert, quoted and published widely in such media outlets as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Today Show, CNN, and the BBC. She has written about baby names for The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, and People.

Redmond is also a New York Times bestselling novelist whose books include Younger, the basis for the hit television show, and its sequel, Older. She has three new books in the works.