100+ Uncommon Baby Names

Updated Sat Jun 04 2022

Uncommon baby names can be unique in an astonishing number of ways.

There are those uncommon baby names that are literally unique, absent not only from the US Top 1000 baby names but from the official extended list of every name given to five or more babies. The Welsh Ynyr from the list fits in that rarefied category, as does Nephele and Morven, among others on this list.

Then there are those names that are quietly used for a relatively small number of babies. There were about 20 boys named Lando in the US last year, for instance, along with 25 baby girls named Ottilie and 38 called Pandora.

There are those baby names on this list that may not be uncommon if you live in London or Lisbon or Lodz, but are in Los Angeles and throughout the US: Montague and Percy, Casimir and Elettra, Lua and Ludo.

And then there are those uncommon baby names that are outside convention in some other way, because of their quirky sound or eccentric feel or unusual origin.

The uncommon names here were all drawn from birth announcements in the UK over the past year. Some of them may not feel that unusual to the British ear, but certainly do to the American sensibility.

This group is unusual in itself in that there are more boy names (60+) than girls’.

Uncommon Girl Names

Uncommon Boy Names

About the Author

Pamela Redmond

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Pamela Redmond is the cocreator and CEO of Nameberry and Baby Name DNA. The coauthor of ten groundbreaking books on names, Redmond is an internationally-recognized baby name expert, quoted and published widely in such media outlets as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Today Show, CNN, and the BBC. She has written about baby names for The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, and People.

Redmond is also a New York Times bestselling novelist whose books include Younger, the basis for the hit television show, and its sequel, Older. She has three new books in the works.

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