Happy Memorial Day weekend!  Here’s wishing you fair skies for your weekend festivities.  But if you do find yourself with a few spare minutes in front of a computer screen, here are a few diversions:

• First, my question of the week:  What goes with Henry?  I recently met a family with teenage twins, Henry and Lucy.  An article in this month’s Better Homes and Gardens profiles a decorator with a son named Henry and a daughter called Hadley.  And, of course, celeb sibsets include Julia Roberts’ Phinneaus, Hazel and Henry and Heidi Klum & Seal’s Leni, Henry and Johan plus a baby-to-be.  Henry was a contender if Clio had been a boy.  Circa 2009, Henry goes with just about everything – that’s one of the hallmarks of a popular name.  Given how very unfashionable Henry was in the 70s, he feels like proof that any name can make a comeback;
• Olympic gold medalist Kerri Walsh and her husband have welcomed a son wearing the classic appellation Joseph Michael;
• From the Department of Staggeringly Bad Compromises:  The Toronto Star is reporting that a couple, divided over their son’s name, simply hyphenated their picks.  The result?  A boy named Jasper-Addison.    While I believe Canada handles double names better than the US, this one feels like too much in any country.  And it seems like all the parents have done is fail to resolve a dilemma many of us face when naming our children – going from a short list to a single name;
• Green Baby Guide blogger Joy is days away from welcoming #2.  Suggestions at their site for included Azalea and Edelweiss, Luna and Sage;
• Over at Nameberry, I loved Linda’s post on Doll Names through the ages.  It reminded me that I named my adopted-from-Germany Cabbage Patch Kid Nicholette Charyl.  My little sister named hers Mary Lou – as in Retton;
• From the Department of Onomastic Controversies: Nameberry also ran a post on new surnames names for boys.  We know a male Marley and a female Tucker.  And I’m definitely hearing more and more parents considering unconventional surname picks, from the super-fashionable Beckett to the soap-opera-starbaby Cruz.  It’s a hot button issue, but there are definitely more and more kiddos wearing last names first.
• Speaking of fashionable kids – and Henry, and Tucker – head over at You Can’t Call It “It” for Elisabeth’s article on Ohdeedoh Babies.  Ohdeedoh is the Apartment Therapy section dedicated to all things for pint-sized style mavens.  Her list of names culled from the site includes twin boys Henry and Tucker, as well a boy called Bix and girls named June and Helen Tallulah;
• I loved Laura Wattenberg’s analysis of the popularity of the name Brady, and his ties to Tom Brady’s career.  It’s the kind of fact that is often lost to history – I regularly find myself digging to figure out what sparked a name’s rise and fall over the ages and coming up empty-handed.  As I remembered with recent Name of the Day Nedra, when you do find the answer, it is quite the thrill;
• Xanthe Linnea did a great post on Girls’ Names not Currently in the Top 1000.  Among her list – Cordelia, Amity, Clementine, Petra, Zora, Fern, Imogen, Lucinda, Mabel, Rosalie and Xanthe and Linnea.  Amazing how easy it is to find an appealing pick that’s not ranked;
• Speaking of Mabel, nameniks everywhere rejoiced when Chad Lowe and his wife Kim Painter recently welcomed a daughter named Mabel Painter Lowe.

I thought I might throw in a short list of summer names, but looking back I realized that a year ago, I penned a post on just that.  So I’ll leave you with one from the AppMtn archives: Summer Names. 

Thanks for reading!