Favourite Boy Names

Hot young actor Alden Ehrenreich, the new Han Solo, gives this formerly-stodgy surname name an attractive new image, making it a fresh successor to Aiden or Holden. Before it got this fresh shine, Alden was among the classic Thanksgiving baby names.

Asher—an excellent, soft and sensitive Old Testament choice—is a baby boy name on the rise, and is a Nameberry biblical favorite.

Dustin's popularity in recent years has probably had more due to its similarity to Justin than to idolization of Dustin Hoffman -- himself named after silent screen cowboy star Dustin Farnum -- who certainly was the one to put it on the name map. In recent years, golfer Dustin Johnson has brought fresh renown to the name. Dustin is a character in Netflix hit Stranger Things. After decades in the spotlight, Dustin feels like a classic rather than an upstart. It peaked in the Top 50s in the 1980s.

This appealing name has a good chance of catching on due to the popularity of Ewan McGregor, and the trend towards Gaelic names in general. Pronunciation is YOO-un.

Gage was part of the craze for one-syllable surnames, with associations to tasty green gage plums and the mathematical gauge.

Grayson, which you might think of as a Jason-Mason substitute, has been rising through the US Top 1000 since 1984 and has ranked in the Top 100 since 2011.

This attractive Scottish surname choice, has a certain amount of glamour thanks to feisty British-born red-haired forties Academy Award winner Greer Garson, who was born Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson--Greer was her Irish mother's maiden name). Greer was chosen much more recently by Kelsey Grammer for his daughter and by Brooke Shields in the Grier form. As a surname, it's associated with feminist writer/activist Germaine Greer.

Griffin is one of the newer and most appealing of the two-syllable Celtic surnames. In English, griffin is the name of a mythological creature, half eagle, half lion. It re-entered the list in 1983 after an absence of 75+ years.

Nathan is an Old Testament name that's ranked among the Top 100 names for boys for 50 years, and could well stay there for another 50. Strong, solid, and attractive, It's a name familiar to every schoolchild through Nathan Hale, the Revolutionary War spy.

Owen, a resonant Celtic name, has ranked among the Top 100 boys' names in the US for 20 years and is now at its highest point ever.

Rider is a rock-and-roll baby name, in every sense of the term, though usually spelled Ryder, as in the sons of Kate Hudson and John Leguizamo.

Tobias-related name that makes an attractive and modern-sounding form of the biblical original. It was recently chosen by Karolina Kurkova for her son.