UK Boy 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.

This English surname offers an interesting mix of images: it sounds upper-crusty yet macho, and also conjures up the coziness of a wintery ski lodge. As a surname it is associated with the Massachusetts Republican Senate Minority Leader in the Woodrow Wilson era, Henry Cabot Lodge, who was the father of poet George Cabot Lodge and grandfather of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., who was ambassador to the UN and Richard Nixon's 1960 presidential running mate.

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

If blogger-in-chief Arianna's first name can rise through the name popularity charts, why not her surname? Uffa is an Old English personal name (we don't see that one coming back) and the suffix ton usually designates a town or village.

To honor an ancestral Peter.

A name only a bully could love.

Packard feels as hefty and weighty as the old car.

Best known from actor-comedian Cleavon Little, Cleavon feels less soap opera than Cliff and quite really on-trend right now.

Only if he actually is.

Hippie name of the Jonathan Livingston Seagull era.

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.

Fresh way to pass down Roger.

Between "Old MacDonald" and Big Mac allusions, this would be a risky choice.

To honor an ancestral Peter.

A possible nod to grandpa Roger, though somewhat stuffy.