“What new names have you heard lately? - News & Observer” plus 1

What new names have you heard lately? - News & Observer

Posted: 01 Feb 2010 05:23 AM PST

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I started jotting down other names that were new ones on me and looking up their origins. Other recent selections from my personal undiscovered baby names list:

JARA or YARA - A German friend who lives in Madrid and is expecting recently told me that, if she has a girl, she plans to name her Jara or Yara, a name that works in both Spanish and German. This was a new one on me, and when I looked it up I discovered that Yara is an Arabic name meaning butterfly and also the name of a Brazilian goddess, while Jara (which can be pronounced with the Y or the J sound at the beginning) might be a variation of Yara or may be an unrelated Slovakian name that's also the name of the Hindu goddess of the household and happiness.

DARIEL - I met a woman recently who told me her grownup daughter's name was the very pretty Dariel, a name she invented. She was torn, she said, between Dara and Mariel, so she combined the two to make Dariel. Many such hybrid attempts are dismal, but this one is a success.

KESTER - I discovered Kester in my guilty pleasure reading of the London Telegraph birth announcements. It is, I discovered in nameberry's very own database, the Scottish form of Christopher. Very cute.

Nameberry (http://nameberry.com) is a baby-naming site produced by Pamela Redmond Satran and Linda Rosenkrantz, co-authors of 10 bestselling baby name guides, including the newest, "Beyond Ave and Aiden: The Enlightened Guide to Naming Your Baby."

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Parents-to-be: Here's what NOT to name your child. - HeraldNet (blog)

Posted: 03 Feb 2010 12:21 PM PST

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When it comes to baby names, the Social Security Administration is the go-to source for what parents are calling their kids these days. (You can even find name popularity broken down by state!)

But that list doesn't come out until May every year.

Fortunately, BabyCenter.com, offers its own list and even accounts for like sounding names, rolling, for example, all the Aidens, Aydens and Adens into one.

Below you'll find the Top 10 for boys and girls. Click here for the full Top 100.

Data comes from "hundreds of thousands of parents who shared their baby's name" with Baby Center in 2009.

1 Aiden
2 Ethan
3 Jackson
4 Jayden
5 Jacob
6 Noah
7 Caden
8 Logan
9 Lucas
10 Jack
1 Isabella
2 Sophia
3 Emma
4 Olivia
5 Ava
6 Madison
7 Madelyn
8 Chloe
9 Lily
10 Addison