Aries inspired names

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.

Highly unusual -- and audacious -- name chosen by basketball star Allen Iverson.

This most proper form of the name shot up the charts in the nineties, only to sink just as precipitously, supplanted by upstarts Makayla and McKayla ad infinitum.

Onetime superstar name (Number 4 in the seventies) that's now in steep decline. Today's feminine is more likely to be some form of Michaela...or Makayla.

One of those quintessentiallyFrench names still wearing a beret, also too tied to the image of tires.

A sweet way—literally—to honor a Melissa or a Pamela.

If you're looking for an unusual Michaela alternative, try this Spanish route.

This makes Milan sound like less of a place, more of a name.

Millie is back. It's a Top 100 name throughout much of the English-speaking world, though not yet in the US. Millicent would be an appealing long form, but many people are using Millie all by its cute self -- so many, in fact, that it returned to the Top 500 in 2015 for the first time since World War 2 and continues to climb.

Milly and her more popular sister Millie are adorable Old Lady nickname-names springing back to life. Nearly 100 baby girls were named Milly, just Milly, last year, and Millie is in the US Top 500. Milly is the Molly of the new generation.

Minta is an eighteenth century short form of a literary beauty still used in England today, but yet to be discovered by American baby namers. It has a fresh and dainty feel.

Minty isn't a fresh word name — it's an old-fashioned nickname for Araminta, the romantic smoosh name coined by playwright William Congreve in 1693.

A pretty and unusual path to the nickname Mira. Mira is the main character in Nobel Prize-winner Federico Mistral's poem of the same name. Mireya Moscoso was Panama's first female president.

If Liv can stand on it's own, why not Miv?

An attractive Japanese name with appealing meanings.

If Gus and Max have made it, why not Moe? Can it be the lingering Three Stooges effect? We think that Moe, like Joe, is one of the friendliest and most open of regular guy nickname names and should get a little more attention.

Russian translation of Moses.

A name commonly heard on New York's Lower East Side at the turn of the last century.

Moneta was the name of two separate goddesses in Roman mythology. The first was the goddess of memory, equivalent to the Greek Mnemosyne, and the second was as an epithet of Juno, mother of the gods. The names of each goddess were derived from different sources.

Morag is one of the quintessential Scottish names for girls. Actually a diminutive of Mor, it has always been used more than the original. Commonly heard in Scotland, but could lead to pronunciation problems elsewhere, and the second syllable could prove very confusing. Morag is sometimes used as the Gaelic equivalent of Sarah. In the Harry Potter books, Morag MacDougal was a witch who attended Hogwarts in the same year as Harry.