Table of Contents
Name-inspired news and notes for your Sunday reading.
Looking for even more deep dives on all the names and name talk you love? Join us on the AM Baby Names Patreon. Join for free to keep up with featured names. Upgrade and unlock even more great content!
Irene, Paloma, Pax, Mira – all girls’ names that mean peace, though Pax feels more unisex right about now. (Originally, Pax was a Roman goddess personifying peace … but since it rhymes with Max and Jax, it’s easy to put this one in either column.)
I wrote this list of optimistic girl names back in 2020, deep in the mire of the global pandemic. It feels appropriate again now, and since September 21st is the International Day of Peace, I have these names very much on my mind.
Promise, Hope, Lux, Zora, Dove … Dylan, Hardy, Hugo … for a daughter or a son, there are so many names with meanings that uplift and look forward.
I believe that bringing new life into this world is an act of hope and joy, and I love names that reflect all that possibility.
ELSEWHERE ONLINE
I’m fascinated by the given name of record-setting Jamaican athlete Oblique Seville. Oblique means slanting; in the case of the muscle, the fibers slant. (Twist a little in your midsection and maybe you can feel it?) I can’t find anything about his early life, but Oblique absolutely sounds like a name for a faster-than-fast runner, right?
Big in Belgium: Lina, Billie, and Lou for girls. Plus Arthur, Jules, and Oscar for boys. I love a list that’s similar to popular names in the US, but gives us more to consider, too.
Rachel Gutman-Wei’s story about hyphenated surnames has me thinking. It is an almost elegant solution, but it’s also a cumbersome one. How can both things be true? If the original story is paywalled for you, read a transcript of her WYNC interview here. One thing that’s certain: couples and parents are more aware of their choices regarding surnames than ever before, and it’s not always an easy decision.
UPDATING & THINKING ABOUT
I love the meaning and energy of Gage, but it’s falling fast. Is the murderous child in the Stephen King story the problem? I don’t see how, since Pet Sematary launched the name in the first place, right?
Somehow, Presley had never been featured on the site. That’s fixed now. Though speaking of pop culture references, I suspect many parents choose this name without a thought to Elvis.
Lovely Celeste is rising in use, and I am so here for this. It’s a refined and timeless choice, somewhere between Stella and Charlotte, Cielo and Cecilia.
That’s all for this week. As always, thank you for reading and have a great week!
I always loved peaceful names like Mira, Paloma, Irene, and I have always suspected that’s why Tolkien named his character Boromir and Faramir. Do you think if you wanted a nature based name but it remains you of serenity meaning, would it belong to peaceful names or would it belong to birds? The name is Serin. It’s from European Serin, a family of finches. Serins sing. I always feel like singing birds are peaceful.