Wonderful Word Names for Babies

Strictly for a Vegas baby.

A paradox is a statement that while seeming true contradicts itself. With the less-than-pleasant "Doxy" as an obvious nickname, Paradox is perhaps a better name for a cat than a baby.

Experience is a word name used by the New England Puritans but probably too joke-worthy for a modern child...or teenager. It does not have as direct a biblical reference as most Puritan names.

Mysterious.

Royalty was the hottest name of 2016, moving furthest up the ladder to enter the Top 1000, and is also arguably the trendiest name of the past decade, used a whopping 71 times as often in 2017 as it was ten years earlier. Royalty represents the convergence of two important trends: word names and superlative names such as Legend and King. This is one we'll hear a lot of for a while.

Spaniards use Pax and Paz, Hebrew speakers Shalom, for Greeks it's Irene, so why can't we make the English word Peace a name? Peace Adzo Medie is the author of the novel His Only Wife.

Marvel, now a character name in The Hunger Games series, was a miracle name of yesterday, on the girls' Social Security list until 1941 and reaching a high of 487 at the turn of the last century, when Marva was also in style.

Hurricane is a storm, but it's also an American name, thanks to rising tennis star Hurricane Black -- whose sister's name is Tornado. There's no reason this tempestuous choice can't work for boys too, inasfar as the name can work for any child. As a name, Hurricane is definitely original and attention-getting, but is it a name you'd want to carry around for life?

A regal sounding name with a cool, trendy twist, Kaizer is a variation of the title given to the now-defunct German emperor. Deriving from Caesar (with the perhaps less appealing, hairy meaning), the traditional Kaiser spelling is in the US Top 1000. Given to around 330 boys each year, it is more than twice as popular as Kaizer.

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.

An intriguing but challenging choice, because of possible confusion with all the Terry-type names.

This British river name sounds sleek and strong but perhaps a bit too energetic.

There are ordinary folk named Prince, Earl, and Duke, so why not this rank of nobility as well? Many spellings compete, the most common being Marquis, Marquise, and Marquez. Rapper 50 Cent chose the Marquise version for his son; David Caruso chose Marquez.

Gambit means ploy or trick, which makes it an appropriate name for a little player. Eight boys were named Gambit in the US in one recent year.

In the old days, this might have been a short form for Dewitt, but today it's more likely to appear as a witty word name. We approve.

Starr today is more fashionably the plain-spoken Star or the more obscured Stella, Esther, or Estella.

Spicy but insubstantial nickname name.

All-inclusive word name.

An ambitious geographical name, associated with mountains and success. In the UK, however, this is a slang term, meaning "bad, disappointing".

As a personal name, it may not have much history, but it certainly suggests the subject.