1450+ English Names

Has a fresh occupational name feel, combined with old-fashioned Currier & Ives charm.

Too tightly associated with the real-life villainous Captain Bligh of The Mutiny on the Bounty.

Unless it was your grandmother's maiden name, and you're using it in the middle place, we don't think so. Could be confused with Hazelden, a leading rehab facility.

Why not stick with the original.

Lively, friendly surname that might appeal to basketball fans.

Writer Anne Tyler gave this apt name to the hippie child in her novel Amateur Marriage, but she wasn't the first -- it was also used by the Puritans. Today it would be quite a loaded choice.

Brock plus.

Just the kind of old-fashioned nickname coming back into style.

A surname associated these days with Breaking Bad actor Bryan Cranston.

Set apart from other once-male-only surnames because of its peaceful element. This is one of the newest and trendiest names that mean peace.

Saint Swithin or Swithun is best known for his feast day, July 15, which according to legend will determine the weather for the next 40 days.

One of the rare English surname names originally derived from a female given name: Eoforhild (Everild), meaning "boar battle". Also spelled Averill, it's an extremely rare choice today, but shares sounds with fashionable Ava and Avery.

Undiscovered single-syllable surname option, a friendly alternative to Reed.

We don't see this one making it unless you have a compelling family reason.

He'll have to prove his humility.

A family name that wouldn't appeal to many parents.

Plummer might be an occupational name for someone who works with pipes -- yes, like a plumber -- or with feathers, from the Olde English (from the French) plume. Or it could indicate someone who lived near a plum tree.

Might be an honorific for novelist Saul Bellow, although bellowing is not the gentlest of sounds. Consider Saul instead.

Brings Jennifer into the twenty-first century.

The -el ending feels inevitably feminine; also a form of French poetry.