Science and Technology Names

Eleven didn't feel more namelike than any other number...until the (female) "Stranger Things" character came along. Now it seems like a possibility - albeit a rare one - for both sexes. Other associations include the number of players in a football team, and Apollo 11, the spacecraft of the first moon landing.

Atari debuted for girls in 1980, a year after it appeared on the charts for boys. It's not a Japanese given name, instead, the name was influenced by the video game company. Atari named themselves after a Japanese phrase, atari, used in the ancient Chinese game Go. It means, roughly, "I am about to win," and is said in a similar context to which one would say "checkmate" in chess.

A scientific name, Kardashianized.

Sir William Osler was a Canadian physician, often referred to as the "father of modern medicine". He was one of the four founders of the John Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, MD, and he also founded the History of Medicine Society at the Royal Society of Medicine, London.

Usain Bolt chose Lightning as the middle name for his daughter — Olympia Lightning Bolt. Mainstream parents have taken a liking to Lightning as a boy name — it debuted on the charts in 2021, and was given to five baby boys in 2022.

Actress Shannyn Sossamon used this as the middle name for her son Audio; one of the most do-not-try-this-at-home combos we've heard.

This Swedish surname is a a great name for those looking for a quiet nod to arachnids. Tamerlan Thorell was a notable arachnologist who described over 1,000 species of spiders and gave his name to the genus of Orb-weaver spiders.

Renat is a Russian name used as both a variant of Renatus and as an acronym of revolyusiya nauka tekhnika, a Communist phrase meaning "revolution, science, technics." Many of these acronym names exist in Russia, where some Communist parents rejected traditional Russian baby names.

One of the least attractive names to come out of the pantheon of Nobel-laureates (via Polykarp Kusch), Polykarp (also spelled Polycarp) is an early Christian saint name from Smyrna. We suggest you look elsewhere for either scientific or religious-inspired names.

An occupational name for the steward of an estate, but more people will know it as a word name from mathematics, meaning an important component. The rapper Graham Murawsky thought it was cool enough to use as his stage name.

In mathematics, a parabola is a plane curve which is mirror-symmetrical and approximately U-shaped. Its name derives from a Greek word meaning "I place side by side".

A variant of Jameson or Jamison, borne by the first Black woman in space, former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison.

Better than Synergy.

The name Lamarr could be a great choice for those looking for a name that has both brains and beauty in its pedigree. The extraordinary Hedy Lamarr was not only a gorgeous and talented film actress but also the inventor of the technology eventually used in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology.

Wave is used as a name in its own right, but on girls, it's most often seen as a nickname for Waverly. It lends a beachy, bohemian air to the classy English surname.

While this has a distinguished male namesake -- astronomer Edmund Halley and his comet -- it still strays too close to the superpopular feminine Hailey family to work for some parents for a boy. Fewer than five baby boys were given the name last year, but that could change as formerly-female names become more acceptable for boys.

This common Swedish name gains science connections from bearer Manne Siegbahn who won the Nobel prize for his work on X-ray spectroscopy.