What are your favorite holiday names?

Updated Tue Dec 10 2013

If you’re expecting a baby anytime during the end-of-year holidays, you can’t help but at least muse on the idea of using a holiday-themed name.

Christmas baby names are the most obvious choices, as familiar among people of all faiths as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: Nicholas and Noel, Holly and Ivy and Merry.

Less widely-known are names that connect to other December holidays. Names that mean light, such as Zohar and Eleora, relate to Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. Kwanzaa names include Nia and Imani.

And New Year’s baby names range from Aurora to January.

There are names that announce the holidays loud and clear: Solstice, say, or Christmas or Holiday. Or you might prefer names that reference the holiday season more subtly: Hope, for instance, or Balthazar.

Our real question is actually two questions. Would you give your baby a holiday-themed name? And whether you would actually use one yourself or not, which holiday names are your favorites?

About the Author

Pamela Redmond

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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.

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