Animal Names for Boys

An audacious sounding ancient name belonging to an 8th-century Swiss saint, an abbot of Saint Gall.

A unique Old Testament name reminiscent of the more familiar Ishmael.

Rare international form of Israel.

Hy was once a nickname for Hyman, a Jewish Anglicization of Chaim. Today it has gone extinct, for obvious reasons.

The first bearer of this majestic name was a 12th century prince of Taranto and Antioch, whose father gave him the nickname of Bohemond (after a mythical giant called Buamundus gigas) due to his large size at birth. The name was thereafter used as a given name by his descendants.

A unisex name with great nickname potential, currently particularly popular for boys in Azerbaijan.

Erasmus may be out of fashion in the English-speaking world, but in Slovenia, Erazem is a fashionable riser.

Humberto lifts this ancient name out of the gross association to fictional pedophile Humbert Humbert, investing it with a good measure of Latin charm. It helps that the pronunciation is significantly different, much closer to the Italian Umberto than to the flat-footed original.

The charming Hitch played by Will Smith in the eponymous movie put this into the lexicon. Also known as the nickname of director Alfred Hitchcock and writer Christopher Hitchens, who titled his autobiography "Hitch."

Names ending in -ton (meaning "settlement") are white-hot, and Arrington is one of the freshest on the scene.