The Baby Name Wizard

I just read an interesting article on names that I thought this community would be interested in: http://www.slate.com/id/2196204/pagenum/2/

AG, here are some other possibilities that fit your criteria:

Jane
Alice
Margaret
Caroline
Rose
Louisa
Rebecca

My picks from that list would be Jane or Alice, which both go beautifully with Lucy and are simple, elegant, and familiar without being overdone.

Re: Matthias/Mattias/Mathias. As far as I know those are all variants of the same name. I LOVE the Ma-TEE-us pronunciation and loathe Ma-THIGH-us. I'm interested at how many of you have met people with the former pronunciation. I had pretty well written it off as a choice, because I was sure that in the UK or US I'd always get the latter.

I am LOVING the discussion on hebrew/arabic name and endings. I *so* wish I'd finished my college hebrew/greek course - I am sure it would have been my favorite class...

Re: Matthias, behindthename.com says mah-TEE-ahs is the German pronunciation and mə-THIE-əs is the English. I would think, at least in the U.S., you'd have a hard time getting others to pronounce Matthias "mah-TEE-ahs" if they've seen its spelling. I myself love the name, and prefer the mah-TEE-ahs pronunciation, but am okay enough with mə-THIE-əs that it's on our list for future boys.

Thanks all for clarifying the -a ending issues. So, to sum: Arabic and Italic (is this the same as Romance?) languages have independently developed the same tradition of -a signifying female names (but not without exceptions).

Hats off to all the linguists here, able to explain things to us non-linguists!

My list of word-names:

Dragon
Tendon (brother to Landon?)
Sinew
Artery
Denim
Pagan (Peyton's brother?)
Arcade
Airily (Olivia's sister?)
Lettuce
Nectarine (Sister to Clementime)
Surly
Bracelet

and finally, parents expecting twins go out shopping for carseats decide to name their children Britax and Graco.

AG-Checked on Nymbler using Lucy and Charlotte for inspirations. Many of the names the group has already listed show up. Of those that I don't think have been mentioned that you might consider are:
Georgia;Hannah;Charlene;Stephanie;Danielle;Melissa;Belinda;Chelsie(ey)

By the way, with the Olympics coming up-does anyone agree there might be a small bump in the popularity of some names?

Letter K--

No, Italic and Romance are not the same. Romance refers to Latin and its daughter languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Occitan, Catalan, Romanian, Romansh, and many little ones). Italic is the branch of Indo-European that includes Latin and her daughter languages plus Latin's 'sister' languages like Oscan, Umbrian, and possibly Venetic. These
'sister' languages, spoken in the Italian peninsula, became extinct with the rise of Latin-speaking Rome as a political power in the peninsula. So all Romance languages are Italic, but not all Italic languages are Romance.

BTW the Italic and Celtic branches of Indo-European are closely related, and at some point in the dim past, Italic and Celtic speakers must have had some sort of connection.

I just came across the first name Harvest. Interesting...

Nikki: some very inspired choices!
re: Lettuce. I've heard of Lettice, as a variant of Laetitia/Letitia/Leticia! Prefer Leticia myself.

Thanks for the input on Matthias. My SIL & BIL live in Germany so I'm pretty sure dh's side of the family would lean toward Ma-TEE-us but for some reason I'm liking Ma-thigh-us. I'd hate for it to sound like an American bastardization, though.
I'm totally stuck on -s names lately:
Matthias
Tobias
Silas
Are these names up-and-coming? I don't want to be a part of a trend, even if I'm ahead of the curve. KWIM?

Just to add to the male names ending in a:
Attila (very popular in Hungary), also there Bela is a male name (pronounced like BAY-lah), but Luca is a female name pronounced LOOTZA. We are part of the Finno-Ugric language family, so have the same basic rules as the Finnish.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned Talon. A friend mentioned that she was thinking of naming her baby boy Talon (or Talan) and looked at me with a befuddled expression when I said, "You mean like the claws of a bird?" I was so relieved when the baby was born and she announced that his name was Declan.

Has anyone else noticed that T may be the new hot letter?
On the expectant mothers board I frequent there is a Timberlie, a Tylie, and a Tayden...

I know twins T4ra (g) and T4lon (b).

I like Harvest for some reason. My style is normally pretty stable antique. BUt that strikes me quite nicely for a mn.

I just saw a young boy named Cannon today in a magazine in my OB's office. Brother to Ruger and Gunner, I wonder?

I've also seen Harvest as a FN, although now I can't remember where--some modern hippie context. I *could* like it, but I spent a little time doing animal research (which made me decide that I didn't want to be a veterinarian but that I *did* want to be vegan--so, clearly, it was not my thing), and now I have very strong associations with the word "harvest" as a synonym for "to kill". So, although I appreciate the sentiment behind the name, it kinda gives me the chills.

I vote for Margaret (esp. with nn Maisy!) as a sister to Lucy.

Timberlie-pretty but is it a "real" name or sort of made up?
The strangest "real" name that I ever came across on a young child was Storm. He was a 2yo in the day-care I worked in. There was also a Mercedes. She was a twin with another girl but I forget the other name. Btw, that was about 10 yrs ago.

Mercedes is a traditional Spanish Catholic name. Like Dolores, Pilar, Rosario, Guadeloupe and Concepcion, Mercedes is a Marian name.

AG

A few more names

Susan (or Susannah)
Amanda
Margaret
Joannah
Ruth
Rose

I just across a book review and the author's name was Brunonia. NMS!
Also not convinced about Timberlie, I'm afraid (fusion of Kimberley and Timberlake?). Yikes.

Just ran those names past dh. His response to Timberlie: "Is she from a logging family from up North?"
And to Brunonia: "Sounds like a country at war with Narnia".

Zoerhenne, I always thought Storm was a feminine name, because of the writer Storm Jameson. But looking her up I see it was actually her mn, so maybe a family name.

Further on Storm, I find it was Margaret Storm Jameson's father's mn too, so it seems it was a family name and not specifically male or female.

I knew a girl back in high school (late 80s) whose name was Chasity (yes, misspelled like that). It also happened to be an inappropriate name for her.

I named my little girl Vanora, and we call her Nora for short. :)

Is it weird that I totally think Brightly would be a cute name for a little girl? :)

I think Ashen would be another trendy name if it didn't mean sick-looking...

Iolite, the gem stone, is almost a headless Violet.

My family raises cattle, so I end up hearing cattle breeds that sound like trendy names a lot. (Not all of these are common breeds, though; I did skip over to Wikipedia.)
All of these are cattle breeds:
Ankina
Arado
Barzona
Charolais
Chianina
Kurgan
Simmental

Chianina-LOL sounds like a female name for your Chia pet. Ha ha-this is Chia Nina and her sister Chia Nora.

Remember the Ramona Quimby books, in which Ramona had two dolls named Bendix and Chevrolet?

my friend goes by 'slogan', as her name is stephanie logan and once e-mail was introduced she was given 'slogan' as a login and e-mail address. it's a great name!

Great list! You have a good ear. When I was a kid I always liked the name Chamois (the cloth you use to wipe down cars...) and Daiquiri...to the great amusement of my folks. When I grew up, I sensibly named the kids Jackson and Anna instead...

And they'd be more like these:

Briteleigh
Krayven
Jaylor
Keystor
Nayborleigh
Saverie
Shyleigh
Slogan (nothing wrong here!)
Streighten
Traylor