Inspired By Websters

The Puritans used it as a virtue name -- but today it would just be considered weird: silence is no longer golden.

Could there be a more poetic name than Sonnet? Actor Forest Whitaker was inspired to choose it for his daughter.

Windswept and dramatic, but perhaps asking for trouble. Quite popular in Denmark and Sweden, where it derives from Stromr, which is a fairly common surname. Storm Thorgerson is a famous bearer of the name - he designed iconic album covers for Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, the Cranberries, Anthrax, and Pink Floyd.

A new unisex word name with a lot of charm, especially appropriate for the child of writers. Soleil Moon Frye named her second baby boy Story and Jenna Elfman called her son Story Elias.

You can call your daughter Sugar, but only as a term of endearment. Her real name has to be something, almost anything, else.

Though distinguished former Speaker of the House Thomas P. O'Neill was known as Tip, it's usually best to leave names like Skip, Flip, Kip, Pip, Rip, and Tip to the pets of the household.

Like True, a virtuous word name, but a little more awkward. In Trust we trust.

Conjures up the rich brown colors of raw and burnt umber, but it may be too close to girls' Amber.

If you live in the city, you might call your urban baby Urbana; if you live in the suburbs--don't even think of Surbana.

Another bad boy occupational name, joining Bandit, Rogue, and Gunner. The Vandals were a tribe that swept through Europe and North Africa in the sixth century and sacked Rome. Their name is thought to spring from the Germanic word for wandering, but has come to mean senseless destruction. We really don't want to sit in on your parent-teacher conferences.

The mother of all virtue names.

Until recently Ward was, like Wally, a Cleaver name, but today's parents are seeing it as a cooler nickname for Edward than Eddie, and are also beginning to use it on its own.

Whimsy is a new entry to the ever-expanding word name lexicon, sister for Pixie and Bliss. While it has an undeniable offbeat English aristocratic charm (maybe we're thinking of Dorothy Sayers' fictional detective Lord Peter Wimsey, whose middle name was Death?), we see this as more fitting for a middle than a first name.

A bit too self-congratulatory and, understandably, exceedingly rare. Still, if you're looking for a modern virtue name for your daughter, this may be one of the best qualities to exemplify.

With the rise of such working names as Gardener, Miller, and Bailey, someone out there might want to dub their child a Wizard — though we're not sure this exactly classifies as an occupation.

Zero has been documented as a given name before, but it's largely familiar as a stage name (such as Zero Mostel, born Samuel Joel Mostel) and comic book and anime characters.