Stephen King Character Names

Ellie first took off in the UK—yes, in this nickname form—and this warm and friendly name has also become hugely popular here. In 2011, Ellie entered the US Top 100 girl names for the first time and has remained near the top of the charts ever since.

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

Iconoclasts though we may be, we like Fred, we like Frank, and we like George, which was among the Top 10 from 1830 to 1950, when the number of little Georges started to decline. Solid, strong, royal and saintly, yet friendly and unpretentious, we think that George is in prime position for a comeback, especially since it was chosen by Britain's royal couple.

A warm and cuddly nickname name, although he famously "kissed the girls and made them cry" in the old nursery rhyme.

Jolly Holly has always been among the favorite names for Christmas babies, evoking the symbolic shrub with dark green leaves and bright red berries. And Holly is the flower for the month of December, so it's also among the perfect names for December babies. Holly is scarcely heard on baby boys, but Robin Tunney and Nicky Marmet used it as the middle name for their son Oscar.

Isaac has shaved off his biblical beard and leaped into the upper echelon of popular boys' names, outrunning cousin Isaiah. A favorite of the Puritans, Isaac has never dipped below Number 400 on the US list of top boy names.

Jack may have fallen from its Number 1 place in England, but in the US it's as popular as it was at its height in the 1920s and 1930s. A durable, cheery, everyman form of John, Jack ranks as one of the most popular boy names starting with J.

John reigned as the most popular of all boys' Christian names for 400 years, from the time the first Crusaders carried it back to Britain until the 1950s. Then American baby namers finally seemed to tire of this straight-arrow, almost anonymous John Doe of names, replacing it with fancier forms like Jonathan and the imported Sean and Ian.

More commonly spelled JUDD, this is a strong but sensitive short form that can easily stand on its own.

A name that defines itself, a bit more curt in the harder K version.

This spelling adds a little more femininity to the neutral Lee. Leigh and sister Lee were quite popular in the 1960s and 1970s among the first cool wave of unisex names for girls, but now have vanished from the Top 1000. The Biblical Leah is preferred.

A somewhat stiff and serious turn-of-the-last-century name that seems to be coming back to life.

Kate and William shocked the world when they announced that they'd named their third child Louis -- Prince Louis Arthur Charles, to be more precise. But we've been predicting a comeback for this classic name for a long time.

An Old Testament name with a Gaelic lilt, Malachi entered the list in 1987.

Margaret is derived from the French Marguerite, which in turn came from Margarita, the Latin form of the Greek Margarites. Margarites was based on the Old Persian word margārīta, meaning "pearl."

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

Part of the vogue for French-sounding names in the 1920s and 30s, Nadine has been replaced by the Russian sound of Nadia and Natasha.

The classic strong-yet-friendly nickname name, much used for charming movie characters.

To the thousands of girls who screamed the name of their favorite Beatle in the 1960s, the boys' name Paul had a thrillingly unique image, but to the rest of the world, then and now, it's a name that's so simple and yet so widely diffuse that it could belong to almost anyone. Paul is an ancient name for boys -- popular in Roman and medieval times -- that's not very fashionable now, which can work in its favor, scarcity balancing simplicity.

Rachel was derived from the Hebrew word rāchēl, meaning "ewe." In the Old Testament, Rachel was the favorite wife of Jacob, and mother of Joseph and Benjamin. International variations include the Spanish Raquel and Israeli Rahel.