What are your favorite unique baby names?

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Baby names are obviously a perennial parenting topic, but in all of our discussions about names we’ve never just point-blank asked: what are you favorite unique baby names?

Is your kid’s name a combination of family names handed down through generations? Something you pulled from your favorite book or movie? A name you totally made up? Or does your kid have one name — but you secretly love a totally off-the-wall name? (I knew someone who wanted to name her kid Saturn but went with a much more traditional name.)

Scroll through the comments on this open thread to find out: What are your favorite unique baby names?

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Comments on What are your favorite unique baby names?

  1. I have two daughters. My oldest is named Keireyana. We made it up based up our liking of Keira and names ending in Ana. We get lots of compliments on it. My youngest is named Kylena; Kylee for short. Kylee has become a popular name in the last few years, and I like that her name actually being Kylena is different. I have no plans of having more children, but while on the topic I really like boy names for girls, such as: Parker. These just seem so strong.

  2. Our names for our little nugget were ones that we thought would be unusual enough but approachable. For boys, Thatcher Alexander, Hector Rook, and Emmett Orion (or Mars Orion), and for girls, Gwendolen Irene, Persephone Andromeda (hubsand really likes celestial names, and I thought Percy would be a cute nickname), and my crown jewel favorite because it was my great-grandmother’s, Zellaweiss (long e sound on the ei) with a middle name of Malena to represent his family. I get the strong feeling that our nugget is going to be a girl, so watch out world, Zellaweiss is coming!

  3. When my husband met me he was disappointed that I have both of the girl names he loves: Kayla and Alexis, and I’m not the type to give my child my name. So our compromise was that, if we have a girl, we will all share the same initials: K.C.

    Girl names we love are Kairi, Kiara, and Kira.

    For boys he wants to use Kurt, after Kurt Cobain who he admires greatly, and would also have the same initials as all of us.

  6. My daughter is Alyx Eleanor. Alyx from Half Life 2’s Alyx Vance. Eleanor is her great grandmother. Her last name is an unhyphenated one of both my husband’s and mine.

  7. Well I thought I was totally settled on Jude for my girl until I read Bowie. Bleerg that’s beautiful! You guys making picking names so hard! Though I have decided if boys come around they will be Hendrix and Morrison.

  8. If you are looking for an unusual name, how common would you say is too common? Would you avoid anything that appears on the list of top 1,000 baby names? Top 100? Top 10? Anything you’ve heard used before?

    I have an extremely common name and I hate it. I hate it when other people have my name and I don’t much like it when I know two people with the same name. It confuses my poor little brain:( So, I’d like to give my Future!Kid a name that is uncommon enough to avoid this sort of aggravation.

    How uncommon does a name need to be to avoid running in to people who share your name on a regular basis?

    • http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-wattenberg/what-is-a-popular-baby-name_b_3071094.html answers exactly that! 🙂

      Short answer, if it’s out of the top 100, you’re probably good. Long answer, it really depends on your community. Names can be super common in one geographic area or economic class, but not technically common in the larger population. For instance, “Solomon” is an uncommon name I was considering, but then I went on a daycare tour that had cubbies labeled “Solomon R” and “Solomon M”, no joke. Turns out Solomon is an uncommon name statistically, but among middle/upper class people in the Pacific Northwest who like Montessori-style daycares, it’s still common enough to have two in the same classroom.

    • My measure is twofold: have I met anyone with that name, and do I like them? If I have met someone with the same name, it has to be a neutral-to-good association. A vibe thing I guess.

    • My name was the third most popular name my birth year, and there were three kids in my grade school class with the same name.
      The number 1 name? There was 1.
      The number 2 name? 1
      4, 5 and 6? 0
      Out in the general public, it’s pretty rare that I meet someone with my name. And I never meet anyone with the name I go by–Dootsie!

  10. We named our son Levi Koliyah. Levi was my father’s Hebrew name so it honors him. Koliyah is a beautiful name my husband loves and is so offbeat we can’t find it on virtually any name sites. Levi means “to unite” and Koliyah means “the victory of the people,” so we loved the meaning. After we named him we finally bothered to look up how popular it is and to our great surprise learned that it’s been steadily gaining popularity and is the 66th most common boy name. Despite this, I have never in my life met another Levi, so I often kind of feel like we made it up. We call him Leaf, which we especially love because his in-utero name was Sprout. He sprouted into a leaf. We like that he has this hippy name, but has the option of his full name.

    My absolute favorite, hands down, please don’t steal it name for a girl is Aviva Rose. Aviva means spring. I would want to call her Avi, after the author, but my husband prefers Vivi. If we have another boy we are leaning towards Dario, after the amazing Dario Fo. I feel it is offbeat but pronounceable and recognizably a name. We could call him Rio. Leaf and Rio seem to go together. As you can see, nicknames are important to us.

    The most offbeat names of babies I’ve met are: Nova, Hendrix, Tyger,
    Ozma and Bandit.

    • Koliyah is the Russian nickname for Nikolay (most names ending in -ya are Russian nicknames, like Sonya for Sofia, Anya for Anna, Nadya for Nadezhda (meaning Hope), etc) lovely name!

      • Thanks for letting me know! That works out, as I am part Russian. We just knew it as the name of the singer from Burning Star. I also just loved how it sounded with Levi.

  11. I named my son Elijah. I wasn’t happy with it but I couldn’t think of anything better at the time. Two weeks later, I thought of it, I should have named him Indiana! Now I hear the name Indiana all the time! That was my idea!!
    His middle name is Eugene, which is a family name and I love it. It was never an option to pick a different name. But when I picked it several of my coworkers made fun of me, and one, who’s name was Eugene himself, begged me not to do that to my kid! People are weird about names. I think Eugene is a fine name. I love it.
    My daughter has a very unique name. It’s Freja. No one knows how to pronounce it and when I tell people her name (pronounced Fray-a) everyone asks how it’s spelled, then ask why it’s spelled like that, then if my husband and I are Norwegian because, I assume, they feel that’s the only excuse for us picking such a weird name. I go back and forth between loving my daughters name (yeah, Viking goddess baby!), and feeling a little embarrassed about it, telling everyone that my husband picked it, but it has grown on me. Which is true, I wasn’t sure about the name Freja at first. But my husband loved it and I couldn’t think of anything better. And it has grown on me, except for those times when people ask a lot of weird questions about it and make me feel this need to justify our choice. But mostly I like it. Having grown up a Jessica in the 80’s, I want my kids to have uncommon names.
    Our next son, should we be blessed with one, will probably be Ezra, to stick with the Hebrew names theme. Although I do have this dream of naming a baby boy after a river near our home. I don’t share that name, I want it to be unique. We will probably name out next daughter after another goddess, or some other powerful woman figure.

    • I’m Freyja (same goddess, slightly different pronunciation, Fray-ya) and have spent my whole life being met by blank looks when people both hear or see my name. But I love my name and am sure your Freja will love hers too 🙂

      • That’s probably a better way of writing how we pronounce Freja as well. 🙂
        I hope she loves it. Growing up, my sister and I both hated our names, me because my name was so common, and my sister, Joslyn, because hers was so uncommon. We’re both ambivalent about our names now. It is what it is. But I hope my kids like their names.

  12. This morning my husband and I decided on a girl name, which has been the hardest thing for me! He loves the name Lyra, and I like Elise and Vega, so we’re just going to put them all together to Lyra Elise Vega. Our boy name is fairly normal, Dean Alexander Deforest.

  13. We’re due in late October:
    For a girl, we have Tesla Marie (Tesla after Nikola Tesla and Marie for Marie Curie)
    For a boy, we have Aemon William (Aemon is a great old Irish name and William for William Shakespeare)

    For about 3 months, our parents really were not digging on Tesla for a girls name but have come to love the idea. Now they tell everyone with pride at how their possible future granddaughter is going to have a kick-ass sciencey name 🙂

  15. When my husband and I found out we were pregnant, we already had a nice list of names. More boy names than girl- and then we found out we were having a girl! Sabina (that’s Sabina, not Sabrina with an ‘r’) was at the top of my list, but my husband wasn’t totally in love. I wanted something unique, hardly ever heard, and said the same in Polish (my side) and Spanish (his side). Carina was on the list too, but internally my conversations with my Daughter, I called her Sabina.

    And Sabina is what she is today! My husband came around to the strength and uniqueness of her name- and it really matches her personality!

    Now, if we ever have another girl, we’re screwed because there are no other girl names we agree on!

    But I kinda love Frida (as in Frida Kahlo)…. maybe we stick with the German theme?

  16. We named our daughter Aislyn Dawn. It means dream or vision. We wanted to go with something different with her name since we named our son Aiden, but when we named him it was not a popular name. As a nickname we call her Isy, pronounced like Izzy. We really like Irish names. If left up to my hubby our son would have been named Agamemnon and our daughter Arwen, he settled for naming the dog Arwen.

    • Just an FYI, the name Aisling (to give it the Irish spelling) is a pretty popular name in Ireland and would be pronounced Ashlin(g) by most people, so if you meet somebody who says your daughter’s name that way it’s not wrong just different. 😉

  17. My partner and i dont have kids yet but we have talked about a few names, i aaways love offbeat names, him not so much…. and his surname is very difficult to put a first name with, however one day a while back his dad was joking with us about our love of sci fi and fantasy tv and talking about kids names and said what about Lannister (game of thrones for those who dont know…. supprisingly we dont watch it…)….. however, ever since then we cant get it out of our heads, it works perfectly with his last name too….. but what would we shorten it to? Lanny? Si? dunno…. but its gonna be a hard name to beat in our minds

      • ah how did i not think of Lann, thanks! thats way better….. well thats it, it has been decided….. Lannister for a boy, Evelyn for a girl. 😀

        • My two cents, for what they’re worth – you should really read/watch Game of Thrones before naming a child Lannister. Overall, the Lannisters are depicted as terrible people who do terrible things (for example throwing a small child off of a tower and brother-sister incest, to name just a couple). If you want a Game of Thrones name, I suggest Arya. 🙂

    • Thanks to this thread i now have a huge list of awesome names for potential future sprogs….

      for boys:
      Xander
      Lannister
      Atticus
      Xaviar (Avi for short)
      Dorian
      Holden
      Phineas/Phileas
      Duke
      Grayson
      Landon
      Novak
      Tybalt
      Aldous
      Huxley
      Septimus

      For girls
      Evelyn
      Eliza
      Eowyn
      Khalisi
      Kaede
      Kairi
      Aurea
      Lara/Lyra
      Arrietty
      Claudia
      Echo
      Aurora (Rory for short)

      sooooooo many names to choose from!

      • I have always loved the idea of naming a girl Aurora and calling her Rory! I also love the sound of Arrietty, how did you come across that one?

  18. My son is Cael Asher, and my angel daughter is Lillian Alette. My full list is (And it’s quite long…)

    Boys: Ilia, Talieson, Dante, Leviathan, Remus, Severus, Iain, Kade, Gareth, Alasdair/Alastair, Sekani, Thorin, Rowan, Orion, and Idris.

    Girls:Iliana, Avalon, Astrid,Pandora, Luna, Adelaide, Kalasin (I’m not the only one! Hooray!), Aria/Arya, Zora, Vivienne, Lyra, Andromeda, Ember, Eowyn, Genesis, Ascenith, Kaia, Phoenix, Nova, Seren, Fiona, Zora, Cadence and Valeria.

    One thing I find interesting is that, while none of these names are “popular”, they appear to be popular in the offbeat community!

    • My son is justice Raad. Justice is self explainitory (would love nickname suggestion as I am stuck). Raad is a nod to his arab side, it means thunder. So all together…. Justice Thunder! I hope I have a girl next and i cant spill the names yet but we’re continuing with the english/arab word theme.

  19. Well I have 2 sets of kids in different age ranges:
    Dakota Jeffrey (22)
    Sawyer Christian (20)
    Parker Quinn (17)
    At the time, these names were fairly unique
    Now:
    Judah Everett (2)
    Mariposa Allegra (2 months) – we call her Posey
    I also loved Clementine and Abilene.

  20. for me it´s all about the meaning of the names, so my sons are called
    Treasure-bearer, the beloved first son -jasper milan taro
    honorable ruler, beloved gift of god – erik jonathan tavi
    ruler of the home, beloved gift of god – henri valentin theo

    henri and erik are twins and i love how their names go together when it comes to meaning but still differ in sound, and the last name ties all three together.

    for a girl only the last name is set yet, tara. and i hope the next is a girl because i´m out of versions to call a boy “beloved one”..

    other names in play were
    tauono
    emilian

    tallulah
    iris
    maja
    flora
    linnea (the twin flower – soo beautiful!)

  22. We are having a hard time coming up with a list of names that we both like (our first baby is due in January).
    Might not be super off-beat, but I like Ellen – of course as an hommage to the very strong and beautiful Ellen DeGeneres. And also Portia, her beautiful wife and character from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Vernice.
    I also read the entire list of suggestions yesterday and LOVE Calamity, er even better Calamity Jane :).
    Another favorite for a girl is Vega.

    The man is more “classic” and wants Emily or Sophia…

    If it’ll be a boy, we’re having an even harder time with naming. Up high on the list right now are Theodore, Ferdinand, Sebastian, and William.

    • My name is Ellen, as it’s my grandmother’s middle name. When I was a kid I didn’t like it much, since it was “different” and, in my head, not very feminine. I wanted to be Rebecca. But now I love it! It’s one of those names that is old-fashioned but never really goes out of style. It’s easy to spell and pronounce, but it’s uncommon enough that I’ve only met one other Ellen (besides Ellen DeGeneres) in 30 years.

    • My father wanted to have another baby with my stepmother after they got married. When they decided to not have any more kids (he already had me and soon after we moved into our house they brought my sister to live with us) he brought home two kittens and named them Emily and Sophia because that’s what he wanted to name their daughter.

  24. Me and my brother both got pretty uncommon names. I’m Jacoba and he is Liam. Liam is quite common now but in the 80s, it was quite unheard of (where we are from anyways). My name was even in the paper as one of the most uncommon names of the year I was born!
    I hated my name for a long time, but I’ve since come to love it, and uncommon names in general.
    I have a shortlist in my head, and whenever I hear a nice name I add to it.

  25. I’m getting married in 5 weeks (eek!), and we hope to start trying to reproduce immediately (double eek!). Our last name will be Light, which simultaneously gives us more and less freedom for a first name. More, since a more complicated first name often pairs well with a monosyllabic last name (think Indiana Jones), and less because anything that could be interpreted as food related instantly sounds bad. Sad, since for a long time my favorite boy’s name was Bran. But, I won’t saddle a child with a name that sounds like a horrible breakfast cereal. Anything that is a color, season, month, or weather pattern also steers into dangerous territory (but could work, depending).

    For a girl, my favorite is Ember. Also Mabry, Ivy, Edith.

    For a boy, my favorite is Tobin.

    I also know a baby girl named Luthien (after a Tolkien elf), which I find very beautiful and unique.

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