Souvenir Baby Names

Pitt is the prototypical blond Brad.

One of the trendiest of the new two-syllable boys’ names that have swept the country in the past few years, including the rhyming Aidan, Caden, Kaden, and Jaden. It's been falling on the US Top 1000 lately but it is still among the most popular contemporary English names for boys..

An English surname name, Bradley has a long history, dating way back to at least 1086, but as a first name it actually succeeded in the US before it reached England--though Dickens used it in his novel Our Mutual Friend. Bradley Cooper is one namesake.

The Irish name given to Miranda Hobbes's son on the dearly departed Sex and the City is a friendly and energetic choice. You well might want to make your son part of the Brady bunch.

The en ending is so fashionable these days, a lot of people prefer it even when the alternative as with Brandon has more heft.

Only slightly fewer girls are named Brandi each year than Brandy, 45 versus 57 in the US. Both spellings have their advantages and disadvantages.

Brandon, a forebear of the Braden-Caden pack, had a great run of popularity over several decades, being in the Top 10 from 1992 to 1998, one of its inspirations being hearthrob Brandon Walsh played by Jason Priestley on the original Beverly Hills 90210--and it was aso the name of several soap opera characters.

The alcohol-laced member of the Randy-Candy-Mandy sorority of 1970s to 80s nickname names; now pretty much on the wagon.

Braxton entered the popularity ranks in 1985 and has been climbing steadily ever since. It has gained from the all-powerful X-factor, and perhaps also from the reality TV show, Braxton Family Values, featuring singer Toni and her sisters Traci, Towanda, Trina and Tamar. Though it might sound new, there was a prominent Confederate Civil War general named Braxton Bragg.

Brayden is the top spelling of one of the epidemically popular rhyming cousins of Aiden, hitting the Top 100 in 2005.. It has dipped a bit recently, but is still widely used. Other popular spellings include Braden, Braeden, Braydon, Braiden, Braedon and Bradyn. Take your pick.

The further you move away from the original Briana, the feminine form of Brian first used by Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queen, the more invented and less authentic you get. But many parents want the distance from Brian as Breanna -- or Breana or Breeanna or any of the other variations -- feels more like its own name.

First the heroine of Sir Walter Scott's 1822 novel The Pirate, then a glamorous 1940s debutante, then the troubled twin on Beverly Hills 90210, and now fading in favor of more modern Brenna, Briana, and Bryn. Much more likely to be worn by a mother or grandmother these days. The song "Brenda's Got a Baby" was late rap megastar Tupac's debut single.

According to Irish legend, Saint Brendan the Voyager was the first European to touch American soil, and his name has been established here for decades, peaking in the late 1990s.

Go with the traditional Irish Brendan. Several professional hockey players use this spelling for their given name: Morrow, Dillon, and Kichton.

One of several blunt B names just this side of the gender divide. While its short and to-the-point sound may feel modern, it has been declining steadily since the 1980s.

Football great Brett Favre single-handedly kept this name in the limelight, though it continues to sink in popularity.

The origins of the name Brian are not entirely clear, but it is suspected that it evolved from an Old Celtic word related to nobility. In Ireland the name is associated with Brian Boru, the most famous of all Irish warrior-kings, credited with driving the Vikings out of Ireland around the year 1000.

Spelled this way, Briana was coined by Edmund Spenser for his great literary work, The Faerie Queene, which gives the now-overexposed name a far classier pedigree than it's usually credited with.

Brianna's popularity in the US came later than father name Brian's, peaking in the 1990s, two decades after Brian's Top 10 reign of the 1970s.