I couldn't wait to hear who the new pope was going to be, not because I'm a practicing Catholic any longer or because I cared which Cardinal got elected.

No. As usual, I was in it for the name.

I couldn't help but wonder: Do all the Pope candidates approach...

Celebrity names -- from Ava Gardner to Angelina Jolie and Miles Davis to Michael Jordan -- have influenced the names of babies over recent years.

But now there's a brand new generation of stars whose names are proving inspirational to parents.

From the worlds of music, sports...

Fifteen years older, and theoretically wiser, than I was when I wrote the original Glamour list that's now the New York Times bestselling book, "30 Things Every Woman Should Have & Should Know By The Time She's 30," I find myself still returning to it for...

Ancient Roman names are being rediscovered in the modern world in a major way. Rarely does a whole class of names from a place or historical period undergo this widespread a revival, but several forces are at work that are making us take a fresh look at ancient...

With over 33,000 baby names on the new national roster -- a full 50 percent more than were in common use a quarter century ago -- you figure there have to be some weird choices among them. Nameberry's friend Brooke Dowd Sacco at

Boys' names have gone wild. You can hear a sudden growling on the popularity and star-baby lists, with sweet little babies being given such fierce animal appellations as Wolf and Puma, born-to-be-bad names like Bandit, Wilder, Maverick, Rogue and Rebel, Gunners with Colts, and others suggesting such heavy...

A few weeks ago we asked the Nameberry moms and dads to tell us their best baby names rules. What followed were hundreds of suggestions, from the idiosyncratically individual (all middle names must be Celtic and begin with R) to rules so universal they might apply to everyone.

It's National Poetry Month, the perfect moment to celebrate the bards and bardesses of the past and present, a surprising number of whom just happen to have been born with birth-certificate-ready surnames. In addition to those below, there are other great choices like Auden,

Baby names 2012 are already proving themselves to be very different from last year's choices, with "The Hunger Games" taking over from "Twilight" as the primary cultural influence on names, the hottest boys' names taking a cue from the girls, and musical names trumping Hollywood for inspiration.

Pop open the champagne: It's Middle Name Pride Day! In celebration, everyone's supposed to reveal their middle names to three people who don't know it. What if you learned, probably the hard way, that your middle name might make other people laugh, gasp, or punch you in the...

When those Big Swinging Dick writers - you know, guys like Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides and Tom Perrotta - stuck to writing macho stories starring male characters, I didn't mind so much that they earned advances that were 5,000 times as big as mine and won all the major...

Beyonce and Jay-Z took unique celebrity baby naming one step further last week when they moved to trademark infant daughter Blue Ivy Carter's name. Parents have a right to trademark their minor children's names, according to U.S. law, but the name has to be both distinctive and connected to some...

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...