Maybe contemplating the name Rufus sparked my revelation. Or it might have hit me when I encountered an Otis. Whatever the inspiration, I suddenly realized that my most-loved boys’ names end in the letter s. Yep, almost all of them.
Amias? One of my all-time underappreciated favorites.
Amadeus and Miles? Music to my ears.
Augustus, Octavius, Cassius, and Aurelius? Love, love, love, and love.
What is it about s-ending names that hold such appeal?
It’s true, I prefer their soft, sybillant ending to the harder –er ending that’s so popular right now for boys’ names. Besides being more gentle, it feels a bit more surprising, intrinsically distinctive.
Many of my favorite classic boys’ names end in s: Thomas, James, Louis, Charles, and Nicholas. And trendier choices of decades past, from Chris and Curtis to Dennis and Douglas to Ross and Russ to Jess and Wes, helped whet the overall appetite for s-ending names.
Some of the names that end in s are fairly fashionable today. These include:
Silas (thanks to Weeds)
Because I’m around names all the time, I prefer those that are a little further off the beaten track. For instance:
Cornelius (though I would never saddle a child with it)
And then there are the names that don’t exactly end in s, but might as well.
Horace (I love this name, but appreciate that it would be very difficult for a child)
You get the idea. Of course, not every s-ending name is a winner. A few I wouldn’t recommend: