UK Baby Names

In the Plymouth Colony of the seventeenth century, Thankful was the third most popular of the abstract word names. It disappeared after 1700 and has virtually no chance of returning.

Sounds like an endearment of Quinn.

Most Americans would take the easy way out and spell it Willem, as in artist de Kooning and actor Dafoe.

Inevitable circus association.

A secret nature name for boys.

Occult name for babies born under water signs -- Pisces, Cancer, and Scorpio.

One of those feminizations that came over shortly after the Mayflower but has been lost at sea ever since.

One of many stuffy British W surnames that would subject an American boy to years of teasing before growing into it at age fifty.

An undiscovered place-name with an appealing o-sound ending.

The -el ending feels inevitably feminine; also a form of French poetry.

Climbing a mountain somewhere with Radcliff and Heathcliff.

Shaw is a streamlined and more modern-sounding Shawn, with many notable surname namesakes.

This Celtic saint's name is the most offbeat Jen name of all.

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

The stuffy-sounding name of a posh medieval village in the Cotswolds, in England, that some consider one of the most beautiful small towns in Europe.

Kerr, a simple, unusual unisex middle-name choice, can be pronounced either car or kehr.

Prettier: the growing-in-popularity Paisley, a suburb of Glasgow, or even Scotland itself, used as a middle name by Kourtney Kardashian.

Dickinson is a possibility for Richard's boy, though that Dick nickname is problematic no matter how you get to it.