It always strikes me as somewhat curious when a name that has been hidden in plain sight for decades—or longer—attached to a significant literary or real life character will suddenly pop into the zeitgeist and take off.  Sometimes the contributing factors are obvious—sharing with a more recent celebrity (looking at...

　　By Abby Sandel, Appellation Mountain 　　How far would you go to find a truly stand-out name for your child? 　　Self-described geek dad Stephen McLaughlin has decided to let the internet name his daughter.  His wife insisted that they retain veto power, so the #1 name doesn’t automatically win. 　　Good thing,...

　　By Anna Otto, Waltzing More Than Matilda 　　I recently released an e-book called International Baby Names for Australian Parents, to help Australian parents find names that are uncommon, but not strange. My theory was that was a name that had never ranked here, yet was on the charts in other countries,...

　　By Tara Wood 　　My husband and I have six kids. If naming babies were an Olympic sport, I’m pretty sure I’d medal. Not necessarily in quality or creativity but in experience. 　　When we had our first daughter in 2001, choosing her name literally took 5 minutes. My husband suggested Juliet....

　　I love the name Henry. 　　If our first child had been a boy, she would have been named Henry. 　　Then, by the time we did have a boy, I decided I really wanted to use a family name — Joseph, if you’re curious — instead. 　　And when we had our...

　　Many parents are looking for baby names that are not too popular but not too unusual, not too trendy but also not too weird. 　　In search of names that strike this golden mean, we looked through the middle of the U.S. popularity lists, from Number 400 through 700 for both...

　　One thing we’re finding really mesmerizing about our gorgeous new Top 1000 U.S. names page is how easy it is to read across each line and compare the names of each gender that have the same rank.  Some of the pairs seems perfectly matched — Sarah and Henry at Number 43,...

　　By Linda Rosenkrantz 　　There are some names that we’ve become so accustomed to seeing on the covers of People et al, attached to the babes of Tinseltown, that we assume that their popularity has instantly spread beyond the confines of Malibu and Calabasas.  But it ain’t necessarily so.  There are...

　　By Linda Rosenkrantz 　　Over the years, there have been hundreds of names that have rocketed onto the Top 1000 for one year, then just as suddenly disappeared, fading like shooting stars.  We’ve made a thorough search through these names, seeing what gems  we might find hidden among the oddball Metros,...

　　By Anna Otto, WaltzingMoreThanMatilda 　　The Australian birth data is generally released by each state and territory between New Year and Easter, culminating in the national Top 100. Below are the names which rose the most in 2013, and some possible reasons why they might be doing so well at present....

　　The official list of U.S. Most Popular Names of 2013 will be released by the Social Security Administration any day now, and so in advance of the announcement, which we’re all awaiting with baited breath, we’re asking you to predict which names will come out on top. 　　Will Jacob‘s 14-year reign...

　　By Kelli Brady, The Name Freak! 　　For a second year, I present the “real” Top 50 by combining the different spellings of each name. Because when you hear “Jacob!” on the playground, you have no idea how his name is spelled, but you know you hear the name a lot....

　　By Abby Sandel, Appellation Mountain 　　Not only did we have a bumper crop of high profile birth announcements last week, but the Social Security Administration also released the eagerly anticipated 2013 baby name data. 　　Oh, the excitement! 　　Sure, the US isn’t the only country to share statistics – and we’re...