Yesterday, as I was writing about the favorite names on nameberry, it seemed as if all was in perfect harmony and solidarity, complete sweetness and sunshine on the site, and that nameberry.com was as tranquil a place as Mayberry R.F.D. 　　Not totally true. 　　Turns out that some visitors are as passionately opposed to some...

　　When I lived in London in the 90s, I was gobsmacked (astonished in British) by how different the baby names were there. It wasn’t like they used names Americans had never heard of – exotic ones like Pema or invented ones like Puma – but that they used some of...

　　Most people, name aficionados and ordinary citizens alike, have favorite names.  My own favorites are often the subject of  professional curiosity, with interviewers asking what my favorite names are and why. 　　The whats are easy: Eliza has long been my favorite girls’ name, and Joseph my favorite name for boys....

　　We’re honored to have Michael Shackleford, the inventor of the Social Security baby name popularity list, as today’s nameberry guest blogger.  Shackleford played a pivotal role in the history of American baby naming by constructing the first national count of the Top 1000 names.  Shackleford, who can now be found...

　　If you’re looking for some eye-opening  name moments, try browsing  through some vintage name books and you might be surprised to discover just how dramatically perceptions of some  names have changed over time.  In some cases what we think of as perfectly valid current choices have actually been written off as dead and gone.  Today’s popular Ava, for instance, was rarely thought worthy of...

　　A year ago this week, nameberry was born. The site had been months (about nine, actually) in the making, and so the launch felt like a culmination. But like most new parents, we quickly saw that it was only the beginning. Here, an inside look at nameberry’s first year. 　　We’ve...

　　Popular baby names get that way for a reason: Most offer a lot to like to a wide range of parents.  The upshot: the list of 100 Most Popular Baby Names is studded with great names.  While many parents have a horror of choosing a name that’s overexposed, some of...

　　We talk a lot about the influence of celebrity baby names on the general population of baby namers, but just how potent is that influence in actuality?  I thought it might be useful to  take a closer look at some celebrity choices and see if there was some way to quantify their...

　　One of the last celebrity babies of the year, Baby Boy Bundchen Brady, spent his first ten days of life much the way one of 2009’s first celebrity babies did: without a name. 　　Born December 8, the infant son of supermodel Gisele Bundchen and quarterback Tom Brady went home from...

　　We’ve still got five months to wait before we get the official word on what the top names across America were in 2009, but in the meantime we can console ourselves with the lists that have started to come in of the most popular names in various US cities, states and even individual hospitals, and in in...

　　Our first crowd-sourced blog, on original names that lead to popular nicknames, was such a hit that we’ve decided to give it another go.  Our new topic: Undiscovered baby names — undiscovered by you, that is, at least until recently. 　　I first thought of this subject last September at a...

　　Unique baby names are more, well, common these days than ever before, according to a new study. 　　This is not really news, and you don’t need to be a name researcher or statistician to realize it. Anyone who’s spent any time around children in the last few decades knows that...

　　The official lists of most popular names of 2009 are starting to come in, and one of the most intriguing is from Quebec, the Canadian province where French is an official language and baby names have a distinct style. 　　The most popular names in Quebec are very different from those...