Category: Name Image
Your name is a pretty huge part of your identity. You use it all day, every day, everywhere. It’s one of the first things new people learn about you, and one of the last things (hopefully!) they forget. It’s there front and center on every job application, exam paper, and official correspondence you’ll ever submit.
So it’s pretty crazy to think that your parents picked out your name at a point when they knew virtually nothing about you. Sure, we all know someone who took weeks, or even months, to settle on the perfect name for their little one, or who took a longlist of 20 name combos for each gender to the hospital to see which “fit” best. But, short of taking the “E” approach to baby naming, there is no way of choosing a name in the full knowledge of the person your child will grow up to be.
Which brings us to our Question of the Week: what name would you choose for yourself, if you could pick right now? (You can find the thread that inspired this question here).
By Katinka
Nicknames as full names: where do you stand? It’s a question that divides the crowd here on Nameberry, but — like it or not — this is one trend that is really picking up steam in the US at the moment, having long been popular with our British and European neighbors.
The proof? Just take look at America’s new #1 boys’ name: Liam, traditionally an Irish diminutive of William, which was given to over 500 more babies in 2017 than the previous year. Meanwhile, more than 800 fewer baby boys were named William.
Here are 17 of the hottest nickname names of 2017:
By Abby Sandel
When it comes to classic baby names, there are two stories we like to tell. Sometimes it’s that classics have been abandoned. Time to name your baby Chicago, Koala, or True, because nobody would dare call a kid Elizabeth or James in the year 2018.
The other story? Classic baby names are back. Everyone is taking a page from Kate Middleton’s book, and sticking to the most enduring of choices, naming their children Caroline and Henry.
Neither of these extremes is true.
As I’m writing this, there’s been no news of the royal baby’s name yet. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of other name news this week, including huge families, surfing- and clothing-inspired names, and well-matched celebrity siblings.
She’s a boy again
Naming 14 boys sounds like an elaborate game from the Nameberry forums, but it’s reality for Jay and Kateri Schwandt. They already had 13 sons called (deep breath) Tyler, Zach, Drew, Brandon, Tommy, Vinny, Calvin, Gabe, Wesley, Charlie, Luke, Tucker, and Francisco, and they’ve just welcomed their fourteenth son, Finley Sheboygan.
A well-known rule of baby naming says that it takes about 100 years for a name to come back into fashion. That’s why we recently wrote a list of century-old names that are ready for a revival.
But not every vintage name deserves to be revived. We don’t predict the return of Hyman, for instance. Or Normal. Or Butler. Or Rube. Or Walburga. All these names were in use in 1918, given to at least five babies born that year, but are not used at all today.
They’re not alone. Nameberry analyzed Social Security data to discover over 5000 names that were given to babies a century ago but have now gone extinct.
Some of these names were obscure ethnic names, like Tsuyako and Mieczyslaw, that have faded from view as immigration patterns have shifted. Others are unusual variant spellings of names that have declined in popularity, like Ulysees and Lauraine. A few are usable, or even elegant.
But a lot of them are just plain funny to us now. We combed through the list to find the most hilarious of these extinct names from 1918 — and couldn’t whittle it down to fewer than 200. Here they are, in all their LOL-worthy glory, along with the number of sad children given each name in 1918:
