Occupational Names

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.

Might be an honorific for novelist Saul Bellow, although bellowing is not the gentlest of sounds. Consider Saul instead.

Governor is far from one of the established occupational names such as Porter or Cooper, but with babies names King and Prince, Governor certainly wouldn't seem as outlandish today as it once might have.

Literary, occupational, and very neglected.

Sargent, as in Kennedy brother-in-law Shriver, is the more familiar and usable form of this name.

A bold word name choice for the intrepid baby namer who hopes her son will face the world with a sense of discovery.

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

One professional surname that won't pass the Bar.

Conjures up a tweedy English country gentleman with a large paunch.

More familiar from TV -- Rake, Leave It To Beaver -- than real life, and perhaps likely to stay that way, given the gruesome association with a butcher's knife. Cleaver was, for instance, the title of the violent mob movie Christopher wrote in the world of The Sopranos.

This occupational choice is less appealing than such brethren as Baker and Baxter.

A child named Peale may have to endure more than a few banana jokes, but the Peales were a distinguished family of artists.

A huve is 40 acres of land, so the occupational name Hoover refers to the farmer who owned and worked it. Hoover also relates to the rock band, the vacuum cleaner, the dam, and former FBI head J. Edgar.

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.

Any name that combines two big trends -- in this case, occupational and western names -- has potential.

With the new fashion for occupational names, we may hear more of this one.