Baby girl names I adore

This kind of plainspoken nature name (think River and Sunshine) may still carry a whiff of the hippie, but this one has a nice, airy feel.

Though she has long stood on her own, Elke has many longer cross-cultural connections, to the Dutch/German/Scandinavian Adelheid and Alice and the English Adelaide, as a feminine version of Elkanah and as a Yiddish form of Eleanor.

Isla is a hit name throughout the English-speaking world but hasn't found the same popularity in other western countries, perhaps because its spelling and pronunciation don't make sense for those whose native language is not English. Think island without the final two letters.

Presley is a much more popular name for little girls than you might think, entering the charts as a girls' name in 1998 and hovering around Number 200 for the last decade.

With its soft sounds, its unisex appeal, and its nature connection, Rowan has become a very popular name for both boys and girls, given to nearly four boys for every girl. The Rowen variation maintains the same gender split but is much less popular for both sexes, with nearly four times as many babies named Rowan as Rowen.

Seren is a top girls' name in Wales – and a lovely choice almost unknown elsewhere. Seren, in the Sirona form, was an ancient goddess of the hot springs.