910+ Middle Names

If you want to give your child the gift of...gab.

More common as a surname, a handful of boys get this bovine equivalent of Shepherd each year in the US. It may gain more exposure as one of the occupational names that are one of the most popular classes of English names for boys.

Hallow is a word meaning sacred or holy. As the root word for Halloween (orginally All Hallows' Eve), this name might be an evocative choice for a baby born on or near October 31st. It could work well for either a boy or a girl and offers the nicknames Hal and Halley.

The vowel ending tilts this sharply toward the feminine, and at this point Havana still has some political implications as well.

Strong, but cold and soap opera-ish.

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.

Yes, there are lots of kids out there named Princess, Duke, Earl, and King – but you don't necessarily want yours to be one of them.

Gruff is a name that gets used on a handful of boys each year, in both the US and the UK.

Feather, though it was used for a character in a Walter Mosley novel, seems too light and fluttery for a real-life girl.

Legacy is proof that any attractive-sounding word can be turned into a name, and this one has the added attractions of an inspirational meaning and a cool creative namesake -- hot young artist Legacy Russell.

Moroccan is a name newly minted by Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon for their newborn twin son. Meaning a person who lives in Morocco, Moroccan was used by the couple as a nod to the Moroccan Room in Carey's Manhattan apartment, where Cannon proposed to the singer. Place-name Morocco is another choice for either sex, as is music name Maraca.

Far-fetched, but friends can always call him Phil.

Wildly optimistic -- and unrealistic -- choice.

A sixties-style name that might work best as a middle.

A sixties-style name that might work best as a middle.

Wishful thinking.

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.

Loyalty is one of the Modern Virtue Nameson the rise for both genders, but in this case mainly girls. About 85 percent of the babies named Loyalty are female and 15 percent male, but there's no reason this upstanding name can't work equally well for both.

Cool and casual, a la humorist Ring (born Ringgold. ) Lardner.