Obnoxious Names For Girls

Part of the trend for formerly canine royal names; this is one a little girl might love—up till the age of eight.

Wisecracking waitress name stuck in the luncheonette. Started as nickname for girls named Regina -- queen in Latin -- now mostly a canine choice.

Elaboration of Rachel sometimes seen in France, but more rarely here.

Colorful, yes, but also probably among the hippiest of hippie names. Holly Madison recently chose it for her little girl.

Another increasingly well-used, more feminine, form of Riley, this one is particularly popular in the South. Ryleigh, along with Rylee, have been rising in popularity in recent years. Ryleigh paved the way for Everleigh, Kayleigh, Charleigh, and several other "-leigh" ending names that are trending now. Ryleigh entered the charts in 1999, and has been in the Top 200 since 2010.

Scarla is one of a raft of modern names that have been spun from established names -- in this case, it's part Scarlett, part Carla -- to make something new and "different." Uniqueness is the value that drives parents to invent names like Scarla, Skyla, and Saylah, but we think you'd do better to seek out a genuine name that's more unusual and has less connection to current trends.

Skyla is the most feminine form of the Skylar / Sklyer trend - little Skyla will never be mistaken on paper for a boy.

Starr today is more fashionably the plain-spoken Star or the more obscured Stella, Esther, or Estella.

Another entry in the fruit name category, this one borne by writer Strawberry Saroyan, granddaughter of William, so named by her hippie parents. While fruit names may become more familiar, they'll never pass without comment -- but maybe that's what you're looking for.

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

Sunshine was seen as a quintessential hippie name of the 70s, reaching as high as Number 536 in 1975. Now such names are making a bit of a retro comeback, seen, for example, as a character on Glee.

One of the most unusual flower names, Tulip is cute but tough to pull off as a first. It has some celebrity cred via Charlie Tamara Tulip, twin daughter of Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O'Connell. It derives from Persian dulband "turban", due to the distinctive shape of the flowers.

Velvet is a name that couldn't possibly be softer or more luxuriant. Many people have fond memories of it via the character of Velvet Brown, played by the young Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet, an intrepid young woman willing to masquerade as a boy to race her horse in a dangerous steeplechase.