Name Lists

While classic president names like James, Andrew, and John were popular even before the men took office (and will probably continue to be for decades to come), the presidential surnames trend seems a more obvious tribute to our nation’s heads of state. Kennedy, Lincoln, and Reagan are perhaps most popular these days, with Kennedy and […]

My formative years were filled with books. The characters that populated the pages of those stories would become important touchstones for me for the rest of my life. It’s not surprising then that I would have a deep love and affection for the names of many of the heroes and heroines of my youth. And […]

The sun is out and we’re feeling inspired by water: the vastness of the ocean, the might of the seas, the grace of a river flowing out into a bay. Artists have always been moved by the beauty of water, writing songs about it, painting it in loving detail. So it’s no surprise that bodies […]

From Jungalow interiors and succulent-loaded Instagram shelfies to palm-leaf-print everything, we have fallen hard for plants. In keeping with the trend of all things green, botanical-inspired baby names are still on the rise. If you’re a nature lover, choosing a botanical baby name could be the perfect way to pass down your green thumb. Even […]

When we each were preparing the nurseries for our babies to come, one of our finishing touches was cultivating their first libraries. As writers and avid readers, we both wanted to instill that same enthusiasm in our children, while basking in the nostalgia of the many books we loved when we were young. We all […]

Every year, the Social Security Administration releases US baby-name data from the previous year. On Friday, we got the new 2018 rankings and the list of names that experienced the greatest change in popularity from one year to the next. We’ve dug through the names that increased in popularity from 2017 to 2018 and picked […]

On the wall of my kids’ playroom is a three-foot-tall vintage color wheel print that I picked up last year when I was traveling. It resembles the small, spinning color wheel that sits on my bookshelf at work and the covers of my color theory books stacked in a pile in my living room. I […]

Arya. Tyrion. Cersei. Daenerys. Four names in and you already know that we’re talking about Game of Thrones. The show’s massive popularity has propelled the names of many of the characters from obscurity into more mainstream use, especially in the case of Arya (or Aria).  And as much as we love Arya (the character and […]

You can’t walk into a preschool class now and not see a Mason, Harper, or Lincoln, even though these names were virtually unused as first names until fairly recently. The “surname baby name” has mass appeal in a naming climate where parents are increasingly looking to expand their first-name options and reject traditional gender divisions. […]

Flowers have long served as inspiration for baby names, experiencing the greatest modern popularity around the turn of the twentieth century. Now, floral names are back in a big way, with Rose surging toward the top 100 and Violet and Lily firmly in the top 50. If you want to go floral but are looking […]