User-created list
By Tabitha_Stone · Updated March 2023
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English, place-name
"Trent's town"
There's only one Trenton, New Jersey, but it's a widely used name, more for its fashionable -on ending than the reference to the city. Since 2007, however, Trenton has been on a steady decline.…
English, variation of Deighton
"place with a dike"
If Dayton, like Trenton and Camden, is finding favor with parents, it's more because of its popular two-syllable surname feel and -on ending than the industrial city in Ohio.
Place name
Rockers Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz put a new baby name on the map when they chose this downscale New York borough name for their son. The Bronx, the place, was named for early Dutch settler Jonas…
English place name, Old Norse
"Geirr's island"
An established place name, associated with a sunny island in the English Channel, the Garden State in the US, knitted pullovers, reality TV, and a Broadway musical. It peaked in the late 2000s and…
Place-name from Papago Indian
"little springs"
We usually think of place-names as a modern invention, but in fact Arizona ranked on the US Top 1000 from its inception in 1880 until 1911, when it vanished below the surface. It peaked at Number 510…
American place-name
"land of the Indians"
This state name emerged in the eighties along with westerners Dakota and Montana, and it's still used occasionally by high-profile parents such as Summer Phoenix and Casey Affleck. Action man Indiana…
Native American
"great land"
State name Alaska stems from an Aleutian word for the land mass itself. The number of baby girls named Alaska has doubled in the past five years, and is sure to continue increasing as more place…
"Charles' town"
Lovers of the languid South Carolina city might be attracted to this rich-sounding name. Could make an interesting update on Charles -- and can certainly work for a girl too. Actor Joey Lawrence used…
Spanish place-name
"covered in snow"
Named for its snowcapped mountains, Nevada is a state name which, unlike Carolina, Montana, and Dakota, has been relatively undiscovered. Warning: today's unvisited place-name could become tomorrow's…
Place-name
Has a lively and swaggering sound, and also some unfortunate associations with Reno, city of gambling and failed marriages.
After Dallas, Austin, and Houston, the new cowboy on the block, complete with old-school Western nickname, Tex. Quietly used as a name since at least the late 19th-century, Texas was given to around…
German
"powerful protector"
Richmond is a place-name — it's the capital of Virginia, US, and a town in London, UK — that makes a fresh way to honor an ancestral Richard.
English place name
Lexington is trending as a unisex name, used just about evenly for the genders. For Americans, it's got a patriotic feel, given the importance of Lexington, Massachusetts in the Revolutionary War.…
Creek
"old town"
Unlike many other western city names, Tulsa has not proved attractive to parents. The name derives from Tallasi, meaning "old town" in the Creek language.
English
"hilly land, from the cliff"
A presidential and place-name that's not a stand-out in either category.
Native American, Cherokee, place-name
"bend in the river or meeting place"
When playwright Thomas Lanier Williams adopted the pen name of Tennessee, he created a new possibility among American place-names, although it's admittedly a bit bulky in size. Reese Witherspoon…
Juneau could go either way as a name. The newfound fame of the movie heroine Juno knocks this unrelated though identical-sounding Alaskan name out of consideration for boys, for the moment. Though…
American place name, Algonquin
"wild garlic"
Kanye West and Kim Kardashian have done it again for their third child: Chosen a name that feels iconic yet strangely inevitable. They named North and Saint's younger sister Chicago, after Kanye's…
Miami -- or Florida, for that matter -- hasn't achieved the place-name stardom of southern sisters like Savannah and Georgia. Quincy Jones used it as his daughter KENYA's middle name.
American place name, Ute
"people of the mountains"
This would make a startling but likable choice; poet Dylan Thomas used it for a character in his play "Under Milk Wood."