Once Upon a Time Baby Names

The good folks over at Crestleaf.com, a genealogy site, have worked on ranking the most popular surnames-turned-first-names currently being used. Shown above are the five most popular surnames given to boys and girls, as current as 2013. Here are the following current rankings: 1. Mason #4 2. Jackson #16 3. Carter #32 4. Hunter #36 5. Landon #39 1. Madison #9 2. Avery #12 3. Harper #16 4. Riley #45 5. Mackenzie #62 If you enjoyed this, please visit Crestleaf.com's statistics on the 25 most popular names from the 1960's.  *edit - Sorry, this site no longer exists. 

Hania (HAN-yah, HAH-nee-uh) is a Hebrew variation of Chania/Channah, meaning "resting place; grace of the Lord" and also a Polish diminutive of Hannah, meaning "grace, gracious." Hannah is an Old Testament name which became Anna in the New Testament. Chania is also a city in Crete which the Greeks called Kydonia, meaning "quince." Spelled Haniya this name is taken to mean "to be happy." There are a few namesakes for Hania - most recently Vin Diesel chose this name for his daughter, but also Polish pop singer Hania Stach, English actress Hania Barton (sister to Mischa), and Hania Mufti, a human rights activist from Jordan. In the Bible this was the name of the mother of the prophet Samuel. Hannah was a childless woman who prayed to God for children and was then blessed with six of them. Samuel became a warrior and judge of Israel. The name Hannah was not used regularly until after the Protestant Reformation, but it was favorited by the Puritan...

Now that my son is here, I've decided to post my list of runners-up - the names that didn't quite make the cut. I'll try to keep this list as short as possible by only including the most recent or meaningful choices, since I've considered hundreds of names over the years. Any of the names you're about to see would have been great choices for our family, but didn't win out against our top name, which did not start out as our favorite but turned out to be the only one that looked good on him. Since I am so indecisive, I researched all of these names, made lists of possible sibling pairings, and wrote my top names down over and over again, constantly re-evaluating. One thing we did not do was ask for opinions on our top names or tell people what we had on our list, because we didn't want reactions to sway our decision one way or the other (partly because after sharing only one name early on, I immediately fell out of love with it). Other criteria: I had to be...

Quillan, France Quillan has two accurate pronunciations: KILL-an and KWILL-an. As an Irish Gaelic boys name pronounced the first way shown it means "cub," or "holly," from quileann . As a variation on the English word name quill, pronounced the second way, it refers to the feather of a bird. Either way, Quillan fits right in with all of the popular names ending with an n. Quillan also happens to be a town in France that is quite picturesque, as you can see above. As far as namesakes go, Quillan Roberts is a Canadian soccer player, Quillan Isidore is a BMX racer, and Quillan Nagel is a poker player, but none are very well known. In fiction, The Quillan Games is a book by D. J. MacHale, and there is a Star Wars character named Quillan. Spelled Quillan the name has only been given to boys in the U.S. since about 1982, and although it is now given every year (before 2000 it was given sparingly) it is still incredibly rare - only 9 boys received the name in 2...

This Slavic name meaning "full of life" can be pronounce sh-VAWN-ka or, less often zee-VAHN-ka. It is also sometimes a variant of Ziva, a Hebrew name meaning "radiant" or "splendor." There are only a small handful of people in the U.S. named Zivanka, and it is mainly used in Czechoslovakia. Zivan is her male counterpart.

Dover is a place name from an ancient Celtic word dubra , meaning "water," or another older word meaning "separated beach." and applies to the British seaport of the English Channel. Dover the town came from the river named Dour flowing through it, from the same root word. Dover saw many different spelling options, such as Douer and Dower, before its current spelling stuck. It is otherwise a popular place name and business name, but as a given name in the U.S. it has never been popular - only given every few years between 1914 and 1973 and never to more than 13 babies a year.

Orabel is a medieval Scottish variant of Arabella, from the Latin orabilis , meaning "prayerful; invokeable." Other variants include Orabilis, Orabilia, Orabella, Arabelle, Orbella and Arbelle, but it has seen a handful of other spelling options. Some of those spellings, such as Orbel, became surnames. Ora is another form, simply from oro , meaning "to pray." As Orabel, an Anglicized form of Orabilia, the name was used more commonly in the 13th century and on. Arabella, also Scottish in origin, didn't become as well known until the 16th century. Ora could easily be a nickname, but as a full name it has some namesakes: Ora Alexander, a blues singer; Ora Carew, a silent film actress; Ora Washington, a tennis player; and most recently Rita Ora, a British singer. This name was used in the early 1900's in America and last ranked in 1962. Ora was also a Balto-Slavic (Albanian) goddess or spiritual guardian. One of the earliest/only uses of Orabel was in the 12...

A sketch of  Søren Kierkegaard by his cousin Soren (American prn SOR-en) is a Danish and Norwegian boy's name that currently ranks at #656 in the U.S., #279 in France, but not high in Denmark or Norway (and may in fact be considered dated there). It is a variant of Severus, meaning "stern." The correct Danish/Norwegian spelling is  Søren and pronounced SUU-ren, while  Sören is the German and Swedish spelling and pronounced SIR-in . Severin is another variant found in France, Germany and Sweden - and is also the name of Saint Severin of Cologne. The female forms are  Severina and Severa . The most famous namesake is 19th century philosopher and Nobel Prize winner Søren  Kierkegaard who is thought to be linked to existentialism. More recently there is an American fencer named Soren Thompson, former Danish footballer Soren Andersen, American inventor Soren Sorensen Adams and several others. New Zealand singer Anika Moa recently welcomed baby Soren Huia w...

Derived from the Old Norse word kildr , meaning "a spring [of water]," Kelda is a name that sounds like you've probably heard it somewhere before - but haven't. Pronounced KEL-duh, like Zelda with a K. However, it is not a name regularly used in any Nordic countries. There is a chance that any usage of the name is more closely tied to -lda ending names in general, like the trend of -n or -ella ending names today (Braeden, Lexibella, etc), which would mean someone took a name like Kelsey and combined it with the ending of names like Zelda. It is more likely it comes from the Northern English word keld , also meaning "a spring," which would explain where and how often it has been used. Upon first glance it also seems like a Germanic name, along the lines of Hilda, and the Norse kildr is cognate with German quell of the same meaning. However, its usage could have started from a surname referencing where that person was from, just like Winston or Colton. T...

Like  Tannen , Oren is a very subtle winter or Christmas name. From Hebrew, Oren means "pine tree," and it is the word for orange in Welsh. Oren is also very close to the names Orin and Oran (Odhran) - Gaelic, meaning "pale green." Spelled Orrin it is both a place name and a Scottish name meaning "pale-skinned," but also in Scottish the spelling Oran means "song."  Ören  is a  Turkish  word meaning "ruins" and is used as a surname and place name. Oren  has been used in the Old Testament and on several modern, not very well known namesakes, both as a first and last name. The Hebrew version is regularly used in Israel. In 2013 there were 108 boys given the name Oren in the U.S., and it hasn't been used so much since the 1920's but it has been used steadily since 1880. Orin was given a bit less in 2013 with only 64 boys, while Orrin was an equally popular spelling with 62 boys. Oran was only given to 20 boys the same year. Bein...

Nelleke is the female Dutch version of the Latin girl's name Cornelia, meaning "horn; war horn." It is a pet form just like Nell. Pronounced NELL-eh-keh, this name also shares a fun resemblance to the name Nellary which was used by Frank L. Baum in the Wizard of Oz book "The Lost Princess of Oz," in which Princess Ozma cannot be found. Nelleke is so rare to English speakers that I cannot say for sure it has ever been used in the U.S. There are not any very well known namesakes, but a quick Google search reveals that the name is in steady use. Nelleke Noordervliet, for example, is a Dutch writer, and Nelleke Penninx is an Olympic medalist (rowing) from the Netherlands. Cornelia, a familiar but unused name, was once very popular. In last ranked in 1965 but had been in the top 200 when the SSA started keeping name records. In English she became more widely used in the 17th century, possibly thanks to the Dutch. We get the word cornucopia from the same root as h...

Surely "O, Tannenbaum" sounds familiar around this time of year, and Tannen makes an excellent and unexpected choice for a boy's Christmas themed baby name. Tannenbaum means "fir tree" from tanne and baum , therefore Tannen as a baby name refers to that tree as the plural of tanne . Tannen in Old English can refer to the occupation of tanning hides and is sometimes seen as a variant of Tanner. In the song, tannenbaum refers specifically to the Christmas tree, but this is a modern change to the original, non-Christmas themed song. The German "O Tannenbaum" was originally a long song in which the fir tree is thought of as a faithful tree, but when the author changed a few lines as the idea of a Christmas tree got more popular, it wasn't hard for listeners to change the meaning of the song altogether. Later the German title was changed to "O Christmas Tree" in America. There are many different kinds of fir trees, many of which are s...