Seasonal Names

Crisp and colorful, Autumn is the most popular season name now -- the only one in the Top 100 in recent years -- with Autumn's coolness only surpassed by Winter. Jennifer Love Hewitt named her daughter Autumn James.

With the tide coming in on a new wave of word names, this one just might catch on, especially for parents who relish sun, sand, and surf. Forest lovers can spell it Beech, like the tree.

Most will see this as a refreshing middle name possibility, but Bristol Palin baby daddy Levi Johnston used it as a first name for his new daughter, Breeze Beretta.

Ruggedly appealing word name in the Thorn/Rider/Storm school of boys' names.

Sunny and Stormi are shooting up the charts — why not Cloudy? Cloudy debuted on the charts in 2022.

Fleur is a generic, delicate flower name that emigrated into the English-speaking world when John Galsworthy bestowed it on one of the Forsytes in his celebrated saga. More recently, there was Fleur Delacour, a French witch and the Beauxbatons champion for the Triwizard Tournament in Harry Potter.

Long heard as a last name, as in venerable poet Robert, U.K. talk show host David, British actress Sadie and old Jack Frost, Frost has suddenly entered the scene as a possible first, along with other seasonal weather names like Winter and Snow.

Gale for boys is more a storm name than a short form of Abigail. Since Gale has resurfaced as the name of Liam Hemsworth's daring character in The Hunger Games, it has new force for boys.

If Apple and Juniper, Oak and Pine can be baby names, why not Maple? Why not indeed. We've heard Maple starting to be used quietly, but with its lush sound and attractive image, we predict its use as a first name will grow — and its choice by the Jason Batemans — who combined it with the sweet middle name Sylvie — will only accelerate that growth.

Nature names like Ocean and River are flowing back into favor, especially with nature lovers and green-oriented parents.

A French word name that could be a fresh spin on Summer or Autumn.

Nickname name hep in the era of Grease.

A generic possibility if you don't want to specify Spring or Summer.

Sky may be a bit hippie-ish, but it's bright and sunny nonetheless. Sky rejoined the Top 1000 in 2013 after spending many years off the list. Sky was the choice of magician David Copperfield for his daughter, born in 2010.

Spring doesn't sound half as contemporary as Winter, which has become the cool season name.

Windswept and dramatic, but perhaps asking for trouble. Quite popular in Denmark and Sweden, where it derives from Stromr, which is a fairly common surname. Storm Thorgerson is a famous bearer of the name - he designed iconic album covers for Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, the Cranberries, Anthrax, and Pink Floyd.

The temperature is definitely rising for this popular seasonal name, which began being used in the seventies, and has been heard consistently ever since.

Upbeat nickname-name that can't help but make you smile, along with its soundalike Sonny.

Sunshine was seen as a quintessential hippie name of the 70s, reaching as high as Number 536 in 1975. Now such names are making a bit of a retro comeback, seen, for example, as a character on Glee.

Fresher, brisker and, yes, cooler than Summer or Autumn or Spring, Winter is now a full-fledged female choice, especially since Nicole Richie and Joel Madden used it for daughter Harlow's middle name, and Gretchen Mol picked it as her daughter's first, as did media mogul Sean Parker. Winter continues to be the preferred spelling and has risen in popularity significantly over the past few years.