1450+ English Names

Yeats, the strong name of the great Irish poet, would work better for a boy. Also has possible pronunciation problem with people who might think it rhymes with Keats. Yeats rhymes with the word from which it's derived: gates.

Pleasant surname connected to humorist James Thurber, with a sound as happy as a baby's gurgle.

Climbing a mountain somewhere with Radcliff and Heathcliff.

Legitimizes the newly coined Denim, as does the Scottish place-name Denholm (both pronounced DEN-um).

Dickinson is a possibility for Richard's boy, though that Dick nickname is problematic no matter how you get to it.

Makes Ida more feminine but no more fashionable.

Unusual, but clear and strong.

Fresh choice in the vein of Carly and Harley.

There are two lovely Portlands, in Maine and Oregon, but not many babies with their name.

For sailors or jazz lovers. Or smokers of menthol cigarettes.

Chosen by Woody Allen for his son with Mia Farrow (now renamed Seamus), honoring the great old-time baseball player Satchel Paige, and by Spike Lee for his daughter, but far too eccentric for ordinary use.

Butler name, and also that of the rat in Charlotte's Web.

Blakesley is the name of a village in England, also sometimes found as a surname along with Blakely and Blakeley, turned into a first name for their daughter by reality stars Trista and Ryan Sutter. Blakesley joins other -ley ending names -- Hadley, Finley -- as one of the most popular forms of unisex names with a girlish spin.

A more modern- sounding alternative to Harman.

Possible middle name to honor an ancestral Philip.

In the Plymouth Colony of the seventeenth century, Thankful was the third most popular of the abstract word names. It disappeared after 1700 and has virtually no chance of returning.

Blakeley is one of the many -ley ending surnames that is being adopted as a first name, taking the 80s unisex darling Blake into the new millennium.

A rather formal British surname that originated as a place name in the county of Lancashire.

Nothing but a hound dog.

Can be used as a middle name to honor Dad or Grandpa David.