My Favorite Place Names

State name Alaska stems from an Aleutian word for the land mass itself. The number of baby girls named Alaska has doubled in the past five years, and is sure to continue increasing as more place names are annexed as baby names. Wilder but as habitable as Dakota or Cheyenne, Alaska is a girls' name choice for the future.

As trendy as the chic Colorado ski resort and film festival, Aspen is fast becoming more popular for girls than for boys, but this nature name would work equally well for either.

Carson is one of the most long-running popular androgynous baby names, with a dash of the Wild West via the legendary Missouri frontiersman Kit Carson. Dating back to when it was the name of Nancy Drew's Dad, Carson is still steadily in the Top 100 baby names.

Current Carsons include TV personalities Carson Daly and Carson Kressley, and Pro Bowl quarterback Carson Palmer. Carson Wells was the bounty hunter character played by Woody Harrelson in No Country for Old Men, and Carson is the name chosen by actress Kathryn Erbe for her son.

Eden is an attractive, serene name with obvious intimations of Paradise, one of several place names drawn from the Bible by the Puritans in the seventeenth century.

A twist on the standard Everett takes it to lofty heights. The snow-capped Everest would surely stand out in a classroom, yet has an acceptable name-like feel.

With Brooklyn, Trenton, and Camden on the rise, Harlem can't be far behind -- it's already been picked by one celebrity, and it certainly has a strong historical and cultural identity.

Holland is one of the coolest geographical names, unadorned and elegant, evocative of fine Rembrandt portraits and fields of pink and yellow tulips. It first entered the US Top 1000 in 2014.

Hudson has risen quickly up the charts over the past 30 years, getting a lot of its style value from New York's Hudson River. That makes it a nature name and a place name that's also got the fashion gloss of New York City.

Euphonious and long stylish in England, India was one of the fastest-rising names on the 2013 list, after jumping 240 spots back into the Top 1000.

Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin put Ireland on the map when they chose it as a first for their daughter, saying that geographic names were a family tradition. And it seems they were a bit ahead of the curve (or trendsetting)—Ireland has been among the fastest-rising names of recent years. Other Irish place names include Shannon, Kerry, Galway, and Dublin.

The capital of the United Kingdom makes a solid and attractive twenty-first-century choice, with a lot more substance than Paris. It's in the unisex column, with both girls and boys given the name in recent years.

This name of the French town where a young peasant girl had a vision of the Virgin Mary in 1858 vaulted into the spotlight when Madonna chose it for her daughter, but few other families except for devout Roman Catholics have followed her lead (any more than they've used Rocco for their sons).

Named for its snowcapped mountains, Nevada is a state name which, unlike Carolina, Montana, and Dakota, has been relatively undiscovered. Warning: today's unvisited place-name could become tomorrow's trampled tourist attraction.

Phoenix rolls a lot of cool trends into one: it's a place-name and a bird name, it ends in the oh-so-hip letter x, and as the mythic bird that rose from the ashes, it's a symbol of immortality.

Ravenna is a lovely, untouristed Italian place-name just waiting to be discovered. Renowned for its fantastic Byzantine mosaics, it's a city that has a rich historic and artistic heritage.

Salem is a Biblical place name in Canaan, believed to be the same as Jerusalem, as well as the Massachusetts town famous for its late 17th century witch trials. Salem is also a popular first name in its own right throughout the Arabic world.

Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin's daughter Ireland opened up the map for names like Scotland, and now that it's been chosen by Kourtney Kardashian for her daughter Penelope's middle name -- in honor of daddy Scott Disick -- Scotland is sure to appear on more birth certificates. Can Scotlyn be far behind?

Verona is a scenic place-name with the added attraction of a Shakespearean connection, as in Two Gentlemen of....

Vienna is one of the more popular of the European place-names, with a particularly pleasant sound, evoking elegant images of the Blue Danube, of castles and cafes, sweets and sausages and Strauss waltzes—and Sigmund Freud. It could be a possible substitute for the popular Sienna.