Animal Names for Boys

As Ireland becomes fashionable as a place name, bouncing on and off of the US girls charts thanks to Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin choosing it for their daughter, some parents may start to consider the adjective form Irish for either a boy or girl.

Despite pronunciation, looks a bit like an airline or -- worse still -- a hair dryer name.

Ib, though it sounds insubstantial here, is actually a pretty common name in Denmark.

Upstanding New England patrician name.

Flavius is an ancient Roman family name associated with a dynasty of emperors. It has an appealingly flavorful first syllable, and is the name of a stylist in the Hunger Games series.

So far out it's almost ready to be let back in.

Rare word name that works for either gender.

Connolly, an alternate spelling of Connelly, could make a livelier and less common substitute for Connor.

Memorable as the Waspy Robert Redford character who captivated the young Barbra Streisand in the film classic "The Way We Were": Hubbell Gardiner.

The first name of the influential pre-Renaissance Sienese painter (pronounced DOO-chee-o) is a simple but lively modern possibility.

Baby-naming rule #984: forget any name that contains the syllable wig.

Commonly associated with the Japanese beverage company Asahi, which produces a beer by the same name.

Soul singer Cuba Gooding and his actor son of the same name put this unexpected geographical name on the map for boys, but it has a longer history of use than you might expect. Deriving from the island in the Caribbean Sea, it had a brief spell of popularity in the US at the end of the 1890s when Spain lost possession of the island during the Spanish-American War. Used predominantly (though rarely) on girls throughout the last century, it has occasionally be given to a handful of boys too.

This name's connection to the Caribbean Cayman Islands gives it a nice resortish feel, while still feeling like an in-tune-with-style boy's name.

A German occupational surname deriving from the German word Bad, meaning "bath". Its most famous bearer in recent years has been (the notorious) RBG – former Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, making this a great feminist name or a nod to a lawyer in the family. Its simple, dynamic, er-ending sound fits right in with the likes of Hunter, Carter and Baker.

One of the 99 names of Allah, according to Islamic tradition.