Category: International Baby Names
By Mélissa Delahaye of Jolis Prénoms
With French baby names, two clear trends have emerged in baby naming: short, simple, two-syllable names and the return to vintage/ancient names. With a heavy preponderance of girl names ending with -a and the growing success of biblical names, there are many overlaps with U.S. trends. French parents are also largely returning to tradition when it comes to naming their children, and old-fashioned names are making their comeback. Name popularity goes in cycles and a growing number of French parents are exploring the branches of their family trees to find inspiration.
Here is a selection of classic names that are either on the rise or already big hits in France, but not as well used in the US:
By Linda Rosenkrantz
Happy Father’s Day! This year we are saluting some Dads whose little girls and boys grew up and landed in the celebrisphere. And as we focused—you guess it– on those with the most interesting names, we found it to be a terrifically multi-cultural crowd, hailing from places as far-flung as Israel, India and Italy. And with many of them having very distinguished careers of their own.
Here are some our favorite paternal parents of celebs:.
Natalie Portman’s father Avner Hershlag is a US-trained Israeli gynecologist and fertility specialist. Avner is the Hebrew form of Abner and is the name of the protagonist of the film Munich, played by Eric Bana.
by Marie Myung-Ok Grace Lee, The Millions
If I’m gonna tell a real story, I’m gonna start with my name.
—Kendrick Lamar
Not unlike George Herbert Walker Bush, my full legal name, as it reads on my birth certificate, has four pieces, not the usual three.
People assume Myung-Ok is my middle name. But it’s just my name, one that was benched, like a junior varsity player, for my entire childhood, and then revived–but not for the reasons one might think–when I needed an “author name” for my novel.
By Katinka
This week’s news includes some stellar sibsets, a treasure trove of little-known Celtic names, and what might just be the holy grail for hipster baby namers: a way to predict future popularity.
Super Sibsets
May turned out to be this year’s most bountiful month yet for Babyberry births, with 26 beautifully named new arrivals born to our members. Congratulations to all!
As well as some standout singletons (here’s looking at you, Cecilia Lilac and Sullivan Mac), we’re swooning over some of the stunning sibsets in this month’s cohort. From the impeccably literary trio of Gabriel Christian, Emrys Atticus and Godric Nickleby, to mighty mythological brothers Apollo and Atlas, you all really know how to pull off a “matching but not matchy” set.
Elsewhere, Elea at British Baby Names featured some nicely coordinated sibsets in her roundup of UK birth announcements from the past week: from word names Saga and Chance, to international beauties Laila and Maya, to double-trouble twin names Freddie and Finley. (Side note: check out some of those elaborate three-middle combos!)
And Real Housewives of Dallas star Brandi Redmond and her husband Bryan (spotted the pattern yet?) have announced that they’ve welcomed a baby boy via adoption, a brother for daughters Brooklyn and Brinkley. His name is a nice surprise, and feels like a great fit for this family: welcome, Bruin Charles!
For more musings on superb starbaby sibsets, check out Sophie’s latest predictions for the celebrity babies due this month.
Looking for a name that sounds worldly and sophisticated? You might want to try looking at a map or atlas. More parents than ever are picking finding baby name inspiration from mountains, countries and, especially, cities.
Here’s how popular city names have become: There are now more girls under the age of 18 named Madison in the U.S. than there are people living in the city of Madison, Wisconsin. That’s over 250,000 Madisons!
It’s never been clear, though, which cities have gotten the most love in the baby name arena — until now. Nameberry pored over baby name popularity data from the Social Security Administration to find the 51 city names that were given to the most babies in the year 2016, the most recent available.
Because many of these names are inherently unisex, we haven’t broken down the list by gender. But we did indicate names that were given almost exclusively to one gender by the color of the letters — pink is girls, blue is boys and orange is the truly unisex.
We had to make some tricky judgment calls on which names did or did not count — we excluded Petra, for instance, because it’s not a functioning city today, even though it was at one time. And we do realize that many parents who pick, say, Alexandria or Kobe, aren’t thinking of the cities. But if you think we missed something crucial, tell us in the comments! (Note: This blog was posted very briefly in April, before most of you got a chance to see it.)
