Unlike Jake or Sam, few parents put Mike on the birth certificate.

Jessie has never been used as much as Jennie/Jenny, partly because it's a boys’ name as well (spelled Jesse), but it does have a friendly and unpretentious pioneer feel. In Scotland, it's found as an Anglicized form of Teasagh, itself a form of Jean, and is used as a full name. And in the rest of the world, Jessie may be short for Jessica or used on its own.

The streamlined Ruben is much more popular than the original Biblical Hebrew version in the US.

Often stands alone in Israel, but rarely here.

A Top 100 name from the 1930s all the way through the 1950s, it's now firmly in Mom -- or Grandma -- land and supplanted for babies by Joanna.....or even great-grandmother Josephine. In its heyday, it had a host of variations, including JoAnn and Jo-Anne.

Yesterday's sensation that rose with the popularity of Whitney Houston. Whitney may have lost some of its style value, but it still sounds like one of the quintessential English names for girls. Today, you might want to shorten it to cool nickname Whit.

Paula still seems somewhat stuck in the era of duo Paul and Paula bopping out the song "Hey, Paula." Two pronunciations are possible—the English "PAW-la" and the Portuguese "POW-la."

Many variations of Jessica, including Jessie and Jessa, are used on their own, but Jess is an exception, given to only a handful of baby girls last year. But Jess is certainly the name that many Jessicas are called.

Viva la baby with this life-affirming name, one of the appealing group of girl names that mean life. Other related life-giving names on the rise: cousins Vida and Vita, and Vivian, Aviva, and even Zoe.

Dave is the ultimate good guy name, but where father name David is still holding onto a spot in the Top 20, Dave -- widely used as an independent name in the middle of the last century -- dropped off the Top 1000 a few decades ago and shows no signs of a comeback. Baby Davids today, often named for dad or grandpa, are more likely to be called David than Dave.

Softer and smoother than Alexander, this classic Spanish name for boys has made a seamless transition to this culture. Adding to its current impact: the Lady Gaga song Alejandro .

Gently old-fashioned stand-alone nickname that owes its popularity to mega popular Abigail.

One of those slender names, like Lena or Etta, that's used in several cultures and carries a range of meanings. But by being so many things, it doesn't feel decidedly like anything.

A classic name with regal elegance--Queen Victoria, like other queens, had Regina appended to her name. She was a Top 100 name in the 1960s.

This is the original, more prosaic spelling, but the airier Claire now dominates.

Marlene Dietrich made it famous when she condensed her first two names, Maria and Magdalena. Now more often pronounced with two syllables rather than three.

Once an upper-class British surname conjuring up the epic poetry of John Milton, it then descended to the antics of "Uncle Miltie" Berle, and now has left the stage completely.

Kenny might be all South Park to some, but it has been in steady use in the US since the 1930s.

Kent is a no-nonsense, brief, brisk one-syllable name, almost as curt as Kurt.

Hard as it might be to believe, Gladys was the Harper of 1900, emerging almost out of nowhere to take the naming world by storm. It became a favorite among parents — and writers of romantic Edwardian novels, seen as alluring and unusual. One impetus was the 1870 Ouida novel Puck, whose heroine was the idealized beauty, Gladys Gerant.