1450+ English Names

Related to the word bourgeois; actor Burgess Meredith put this surname in first place.

One of the best of this fashionable occupational group, strong and particularly well suited to a girl, also with alluring connection to glamour girl Ava Gardner.

A name you would probably want to use only if it's in your family history. The first syllable moves it miles away from the softer Whitney.

Randall Jarrell was an important mid-20th century poet; his surname makes a pleasingly soft name for a girl.

Cheever has a nice, cheery sound, literary ties to novelist and short writer John Cheever and also, sideways, to the Edward Arlington Robinson narrative poem "Miniver Cheevy," as well as a subliminal association with the desirable word achiever: all strong pluses.

To honor an ancestral Peter.

Surname doomed to remain a surname.

Fresh way to pass down Roger.

Gentle and southern-inflected, redolent of the North Carolina landscape.

Ruggedly appealing word name in the Thorn/Rider/Storm school of boys' names.

Peel may seem at first like a cool name, until you consider the inevitable teasing. A peel was a tower that sheltered humans and animals against attack, though these days it's better known as the skin of a banana.

Obscure surname and Yorkshire and Lincolnshire place-name (where it's spelled Ferriby) makes a jaunty first. Placed in the public eye by Manhattan socialite Ferebee Bishop Taube.

If blogger-in-chief Arianna's first name can rise through the name popularity charts, why not her surname? Uffa is an Old English personal name (we don't see that one coming back) and the suffix ton usually designates a town or village.

Above par middle name possibility.

Place name and surname that sounds a tad snooty.

This English surname offers an interesting mix of images: it sounds upper-crusty yet macho, and also conjures up the coziness of a wintery ski lodge. As a surname it is associated with the Massachusetts Republican Senate Minority Leader in the Woodrow Wilson era, Henry Cabot Lodge, who was the father of poet George Cabot Lodge and grandfather of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., who was ambassador to the UN and Richard Nixon's 1960 presidential running mate.

This occupational choice is less appealing than such brethren as Baker and Baxter.

A child named Peale may have to endure more than a few banana jokes, but the Peales were a distinguished family of artists.

So identified with the hero of the Sir Walter Scott novel, it would be almost impossible for any boy to carry.

A family name, a bit haughty.