One Syllable Names for Boys

Though mountain climbers may want to honor the famed Central Asian mountain range known as the Hindu Kush, associations with marijuana and Jared Kushner make this a hard sell.

Wong is a common romanization of the pinyin Chinese family names Huang and Wang, as well as rarer surnames such as Heng and Hong.

Brain is not a name, it's a misspelling of the long-popular Brian. What's really astonishing is not that it made the Top 1000 at all but that it hung on there for 25 years, from 1965 through 1989, Brian's heyday. All we can say is: sad.

Perfect example of a surname that would work well as a first.

Combine trendy Crew with even trendier Cruz, and you've got Crews. This English surname, derived from a nickname "the cruse" (i.e. the merry), is made famous by actor Terry Crews.

That double a invests the old Arthur nickname with fresh life.

Short but not particularly sweet surname.

Variant spelling of Nyx, the name of the Greek goddess of the night. It also coincides with the English word "nix, a corruption of German nichts "nothing". Nix would fit right in with names like Knox, Rex, Pax and Max.

In its native Nigeria, Agu is a surname that signifies strength and being a force of nature. Agu as a first name has some pedigree, however: most notably via Agu Casmir, a famous Nigerian-Singaporean soccer player.

This rare name received national attention in 2021 when actor Frankie Muniz and his wife Paige named their son Mauz Mosley. The variation they used stems from the Hebrew word Mauzzim, literally translating to "fortresses" (mauz would be the singular, "fortress"). Some versions of the Bible interpret Mauzzim in context as "God's protectors."

For 007 fans, a great middle name choice -- or even a first.

We have Cove and Canyon—why not Cave?

Musician Ry Cooder brought this short form into the lexicon -- his full name is Ryland -- and it feels more familiar now that more Ry- beginning names such as Ryder and Riley are, ahem, riding up the ranks. The Rye spelling makes it more of a word or a nature name and less of a nickname.