Boy Names That Mean Life

To honor the majestic mountain.

This name, similar to Ryan and Rylan, dropped out of the Top 500 in 2016 after a six year stint in it. It's the full birth name of legendary musician Ry Cooder.

The only boy in the Brontë family; the name has a lonely Wuthering Heights/Jane Eyre feel.

No-no appelation of a child saint and martyr whose name is a term for the nervous condition known as Saint Vitus' Dance. Its one recommending feature is that it's among the elite group Boy names that mean life.

Musical term with a lot of energy.

Though a common name in Hungary, the relatively rare Z sound is striking to English speakers. Penn Gillette used the Zolten spelling for his son; it was also the name of Dracula's dog, and was also a robotic character in Dude, Where's My Car?.

A neologism coined for the 2012 Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which aims to come up with new terms for emotions that currently lack words

Vivaan is a life-related name from India that has made its way onto the US Top 1000 for the first time in 2014. While unusual, it has a familiar and appealing lively sound and feel. However, be aware that people unfamiliar with the name may misread and mispronounce it as Vivian.

If Gus and Max have made it, why not Moe? Can it be the lingering Three Stooges effect? We think that Moe, like Joe, is one of the friendliest and most open of regular guy nickname names and should get a little more attention.

Might suggest speed, excitement, even danger, were it not for its best-known bearer, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh.

In the Igbo culture of Nigeria, the name Nnamdi is given to baby boys who are thought to be reincarnations of their grandfathers. The name is familiar via Nnamdi Asomugha, a former NFL player married to Kerry Washington.

Best left on the old southern plantation, sipping his mint julep.

Closely associated with French soccer star Zinedine Zidane, who became the manager of Real Madrid after retiring from play. One of the Arabic names for boys with modern rather than Quranic origins.

Pronounced CHY, it's a word name meaning tea in many Eastern languages. The Hebrew name is pronounced without the C as HAI.

With the current taste for last names first, this sounds a lot cooler than Shawn; it also has creative connections to the great Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, novelist Irwin Shaw, and Big Band Era clarinetist/bandleader and one-time Ava Gardner husband Artie Shaw.

Despite being one of the rare boy names that mean life, Chaim barely survived early Jewish immigration, being watered down to Hyman and Hymie. Today, the original seems like the most promising form of the name, familiar thanks to bestselling author Chaim Potok.

Tarvo has two potential origin stories. The first is that it derives from the Old Finnish word tarvas, meaning "wild aurochs," a wild species of cattle that is now extinct. The second possible derivation is from the Estonian tarv, meaning "energy."

Norwegian city name heard much more often as a last name than a first.

When actress Deborah Kerr entered the scene, there was a great debate over her name's pronunciation. Car or Ker. Your choice.