When a name like Talula Does The Hula from Hawaii gets banned, it makes big news. But there are lots of other names that, now and since the beginning of recorded name time, have quietly been relegated to the forbidden list. No judge may have pounded a gavel,...

When you're choosing a name for your baby, why should you care which names were most popular last year? What really matters is which baby names are going to be popular next year and into the future. You want to know which names you're going to...

2011 was quite a year for celebrity baby names, but then again, you could say that for every recent year. Some stars this year mined old-fashioned sources of inspiration, while others went wild with inventions of their own.

Here, the Nameberry Awards for the best, the worst,...

Baby names in 2012 promise revolutionary new directions in the continuing and escalating search for meaning coupled with originality. That can be a hard bill to fill when it comes to baby names, pushing parents in 2012 to look to some fresh sources and create names that have...

Twilight names Bella and Jacob, and Harry Potter may have been the hottest baby names inspired by books and movies over the past few years, but there are new character names in town.

Gatsby, as in F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel and the holiday season's hottest movie, is one of...

This biggest Kardashian news of the week was that newly-engaged Kim and extremely tall fiance Kris Humphries are "reserving" names that start with the family's favorite initial K for the yet-to-be conceived baby.

K names are among the fastest-rising on this year's Social Security Popularity List, with such...

Family names are important to nearly three quarters of expectant parents, according to a Nameberry.com poll, but for parents whose own mother and father have passed away, choosing a name that honors them and keeps their memory alive may take on a special significance.

That's one important message...

This was one of those delicious mornings when I allowed myself to dip into the recent British baby names in the London Telegraph birth announcements. As usual, they didn't disappoint (can you tell that my speech has suddenly acquired a British cadence?) and I managed to...

Baby names 2011 signal a new lighter feel in the air and more optimistic outlook for our offspring. With the economy improving and no Presidential election looming, we predict a respite from the heavier names of recent years.

Here, our outlook for the Top 15 trends for

The idea for this blog arose, as so many good things do, from the nameberry forums. This forum focused on names that had more than one legitimate spelling, and asked visitors to pick their favorite of the two (or more).

With so much talk these days about yooneek...

Every few months, about as often as I allow myself to relish a hot caramel sundae and with about the same amount of delicious anticipation, I dip into the London Telegraph birth announcements to see what the upper-crusty British baby namers are up to.

And as with that...

Often I'll look up a name I think is attractive or stylish -- or even trendy -- on nameberry, and find myself shocked to discover it doesn't rank in the Top 1000. How is it possible that names du jour like Esme or Clementine, Tallulah or Wren doesn't...

More people are coming to nameberry these days in search of a cool middle name for Facebook. The whole give-yourself-a-new-middle-name thing started on Facebook way back in 2008, when supporters of Barack Obama took his middle name Hussein.

Next up: Facebookers began adopting the middle name Equality, to...

Earlier we looked at the most popular girls' names on nameberry so far this year; now we turn our attention to nameberry's top 100 boys' names for 2010.

The top seven names remain the same from the first quarter count, with Henry, Finn, and Oliver holding...

I created a blog called How Not To Act Old, two months later I sold it as a book to Harper Collins, and it went on to be a New York Times bestseller.

How did I do it? Here, the ten most important things you need...

The most popular girls' names right now won't be tallied by the Social Security Administration until next May, but over at nameberry we have our fingers on the pulse of baby-naming 2010. The most-searched girls' names for the first half of the year are Charlotte at number 1,...

Sandra Bullock's choice of Bardo as her newly-adopted son's middle name puts the spotlight back on the O names - names that begin, end, or otherwise emphasize the letter O.

Over at nameberry we always loved the O names and have taken an ever-expanding view of the category...

Two things inspired me to write my new novel, Ho Springs, online, day by day, instead of writing it for a conventional publisher the way I did my first five novels. Well, two things that are easy to explain.

The first was my husband, after watching the DVD...

This year was notable by a swell of great celebrity baby names, far outweighing the quirky, strange, and downright bad.

What were the very best? According to a Nameberry poll of nearly 700 people, the winners are:

Seraphina Rose Elizabeth, name of the second daughter of Jennifer...

Celebrities and pop culture proved the strongest influence on the baby names of 2009.

While the biggest baby name news of the year was Emma's rise to claim the number one spot for girls' names, the names moving fastest up the popularity ladder were influenced by stars, their babies,...