UK Baby Names

Long-used surname name that's up for promotion to greater popularity.

Stronger and fresher than the original, though it may provoke the question, "Got a light?"

Even more uppity than Upton.

Not only did rocker John Mellencamp name his son Speck, but he appended the middle name Wildhorse to it.

Yeats, the strong name of the great Irish poet, would work better for a boy. Also has possible pronunciation problem with people who might think it rhymes with Keats. Yeats rhymes with the word from which it's derived: gates.

A jolly, bawdy image that recalls the hero of the eighteenth-century novel Tristram Shandy; also a drink in British pubs.

Paterson is a surname-name to continue a line of Peters and also the name of a city in New Jersey, hometown of poets William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg.

Possible middle name to honor an ancestral Philip.

Bobbsey Twins-era nickname name that could find new life via Nan, heroine of The Nanny Diaries. Nan was also the nickname of Annabel St George, the protagonist of Edith Wharton's novel "The Buccaneers".

Unusual, serious, no-nonsense occupational surname that could be borrowed from the boys.

A popular first name in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, giving rise to surnames Gifford et al. Could enjoy a comeback thanks to trendy Griffin.

Unusual, but clear and strong.

For fans of the (female) author A. S. ; makes an interesting alternative to Wyatt or the hotelish Hyatt.

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.

Putting a C before Albert doesn't make this old occupational name any more contempo.

Bronnen is an attractive name but is similar to so many others -- Brennan, Brannon, Bronwen -- it's sure to provoke a lot of "What was that again?"