Humiliating names

If it's royalty you're after, stick with Earl or Prince -- this is too deified.

Lucifer is the name of the archangel cast into hell -- theologians disagree on whether he and Satan are separate beings -- and as such has long been on the forbidden list for religious parents. Still banned in New Zealand, Lucifer is occasionally used in the contemporary U.S.: Six boys were given the name in the most recent year counted.

Makaveli was an alias of Tupac Shakur — his posthumous album, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, was released under the pseudonym. The album was released in 1996, following his death, and the next year Makaveli debuted on the baby name charts after being given to 11 baby boys.

The Polish form of Maximilian.

You're really asking for it with this one.

A handful of years ago, a judge in Tennessee ruled that parents could not name their son Messiah, "because there's only one." That decision has since been overturned and the name no longer looks out of place besides the growing number of Saints and Chosens.

Modesty is a virtue name dating to Roman times, but never widely used, except for hot 1960s movie spoof heroine, Modesty Blaise, based on a comic strip.

Not as palatable as Cash.

Although the sound is pretty, "my" is too common of an English word for My to be usable as a baby name in Anglophone countries.

Not unless you want your son to grow up to be just like a wacky Jack Black character.

Our kids laughed when they saw this name. Enough said.

It may have been used by the Puritans, but any modern child would chafe under this name.