930+ English Names for Boys

Might make a good middle name for the child of a musician, though people could think you were honoring your BMW.

Could be a possible and more modern, namesake for Uncle Neal.

Only if you don't mind hearing yourself saying, "Come quickly, Quixley."

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

Clumsy when used as a first name.

Beautiful downtown Burbank -- about as glamorous a place-name as Akron...or Detroit.

Not manly enough.

Pompous and pretentious.

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

Dancer feels like a name ready to leap into the charts with its sense of life and joy; and if names like Hunter and Archer can be used, why not Dancer. There will be some danger of other kids relating this one to Santa's reindeer and it might make a good name for a Christmas baby, but that might be a positive connotation for a child.

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.

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.