We’re noticing a lot of V’s — as in vivacious and vibrant — popping up in cool names these days. There’s Vivienne, of course, the name of Brad and Angelina‘s twin daughter, and also the name of Rosie O’Donnell‘s youngest child.  Then there’s Olive, the name of Isla Fisher and...

　　Ryan is the Number One name in New York City — for Asian baby boys.  Kevin is a top choice among Asian parents too. 　　Ethnic names are getting more and more popular, and not only among people from “matching” ethnic backgrounds.  Irish choices like Ryan and Kevin — and Aidan/Aiden,...

　　Back in the Gay Nineties–the 1890s, that is–there was a major craze for flower names, with Rose, Daisy and Lillie high on the popularity lists. Concurrent with that, there was a mini-fad for jewel names, as in Ruby, Pearl and Opal. Today, history does seem to be repeating itself. Not...

　　*UPDATE!  The M.I.A. baby had been named, and the name is….Ikhyd (first erroneously reported as Ickitt) Edgar Arular.  Take that, Bronx Mowgli and Moxie Crimefighter!  Congratulations, we think. 　　The M.I.A. baby is due on Sunday, the same day the nine months pregnant pop artist is set to perform at the...

　　One of nameberry’s hidden wonders is its lists of names that peaked in every year from 1880 to 2007, the most recent one counted.  These lists, created by our brilliant yet anonymous (ironic, huh?) software engineer, give a snapshot not of the most popular but of the trendiest names at...

　　Yesterday we looked at our list of names that peaked in 2007 and predicted general baby name trends.  Today, we’re identifying those names we expect to be hearing a lot more of in the future. 　　Not included on this list are the trendy choices like Addison and Aiden that everybody...

　　When we finally finished researching and writing our encyclopedic name book, the day came when we had to decide what to call it. (The working title of Big Baby Name Book just wasn’t going to cut it.) 　　This turned out to be almost as laborious a task as writing the...

　　Our latest book, Cool Irish Names for Babies, will be hitting the bookstores in a few weeks and we’ll be offering you a few hors d’oeuvres (that doesn’t sound very Irish) before then. The book contains lots of undiscovered Irish baby names drawn from myth, legend and history, cool celebrity and...

　　I was lucky enough to go to Paris recently, and like most tourists, I ate croissants in sidewalk cafes, visited museums, and walked along the Seine.  Unlike most tourists, I also investigated the chicest French baby names. 　　“Prune,” pronounced a very stylish and knowledgeable Parisian woman of my acquaintance.  “Prune...

　　Sam, Max and Jake were once seen as cigar-chomping movie moguls who had retired to Miami Beach to become pinochle-playing Grandpas.  But they’ve all gone on to be popular baby names, both in their nickname and long forms, with Jacob topping the list since 1999. 　　Samuel, Jacob and cousin Benjamin are...

　　One thing we learned when we wrote about hipster baby names is that nobody wants one.  Many people were horrified if they found their favorite names — or worse, their actual children’s names — on our list of hipster names.   No matter how much they’d loved the name before, they...

　　Yesterday we got the news flash that Anne Heche named her son Atlas and last week we learned that Erykah Badu chose Mars for her baby girl. Do we smell the beginnings of a trendlet? 　　Yes,  some celebrity parents do seem to be intent on making little gods and goddesses–instant objects of...

　　Cowboy names first galloped onto the scene in the 1950s and 1960s, along with the cool Western TV shows and movies of the era.  A lot of these were Old Testament names that had not been heard much since, well, since the real Old West.  Some of the early choices...