Alternate Spellings

A fast-rising variation of Abigail that was shooting up the popularity charts a few years ago, but whose star is now falling now that Abigail is not quite as hot as she once was.

As soon as a name becomes mega-popular, parents start to look for spelling variations to set their child apart. This is one of the less graceful ones.

When British beauty Laura Hollin morphed into supermodel Agyness Deyn, she created a name few others would want to adopt.

About 60 girls were named Alise in the US last year, making it an uncommon but not truly rare name. While it's pretty and intriguing as a spin on the very popular Alice, it's pronounced more like Elise or -- in Latvian -- Elisa, and so may prove more confusing than it's worth. If you want to name your daughter Alice, name her Alice, and if you want to name her Elise, name her Elise. Choosing Alise in many ways gives you the worst of all worlds.

Needlessly confusing; stick with Bailey.

A confusing looking name—is it BRY-anna or BREE-anna? There are other feminine variants of Bryan/Brian which look less made up, such as Brianna and Breanna. We recommend looking into those choices to avoid pronunciation issues.

Carly and company have had a good run, fueled by Nickelodeon's popular series iCarly, as well as Canadian pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen.

Charlie and its many forms are on the rise -- including Charley, which relates more directly to the male formal name Charles. Surprisingly, though, while the number of girls and boys named Charlie are nearly even, there are six times as many girls named Charley than boys. The Charley spelling is now a fixture in the Top 600, though it remains less popular than Charlee for girls.

Kind of a Kristen/Christine compromise name that makes less of either choice.

Unnecessary complication.

As the French Esme becomes more popular, it will inevitably spawn spelling variations. This one, like Zoey or Layla, clarifies pronunciation, so while we prefer the original, that's not a bad thing.