930+ English Names for Boys

Intriguing meaning, but stuffy sound.

Family name best used in the middle, especially since it was seen as the portly postman in Seinfeld.

Try telling the kids it really means "pretty face" and not "burper".

Double whammy: the expression "Seward's folly" and inevitable sewer jokes.

We don't see this one making it unless you have a compelling family reason.

Somewhat dashing surname, but with serious teasing potential.

A better modern solution than Robert Jr. ; known to fiction readers via Canadian novelist Robertson Davies.

Drover, an ancient occupational surname, is right in step with today's styles and would make a distinctive choice. Drover and brothers are fresh updates of such now-widely-used names as Carter and Cooper.

Saint Swithin or Swithun is best known for his feast day, July 15, which according to legend will determine the weather for the next 40 days.

Sounds like a Hobbit.

To honor an ancestral Peter.

Patterson is an upscale name worth considering if you're looking to continue a line of Peters, but soundalike Paterson is a downscale city in New Jersey.

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.

Lively, friendly surname that might appeal to basketball fans.

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

Ambitious geographical name.

Alaska's second most populous city makes a baby name with a preppy, even aristocratic, flavor.

Seldom heard as a first name.

Plummer might be an occupational name for someone who works with pipes -- yes, like a plumber -- or with feathers, from the Olde English (from the French) plume. Or it could indicate someone who lived near a plum tree.

A case in which the son is now more attractive than the father. There have been Colonial settlers surnamed Dennison on this side of the Atlantic since 1623.