The Baby Name on Everybody’s Lips 💋

This unique baby name is about to hit the big time…

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of our lovely friends and followers!

Our newly updated list of Valentine baby names includes over 100 adorable options for a little lovebug born on or around February 14 💘

Unique options we love for a Valentine’s Day baby boy include Aubade, a musical word name dating back to medieval France with the poetic meaning of “love song sung at dawn”. 

And our favorite quirky Valentine’s names for girls include Kerensa, a Cornish name meaning “love”, and Scottish Vevina, which means “fair lady”.

Noble, Cuddly Names Fit for a Rom Com Hero

Love it or loathe it, Valentine’s Day is always a great excuse to snuggle up on the couch with a classic rom com – the cornier the better!

Colin Firth and Hugh Grant are, of course, the undisputed kings of the rom com, so it’s no surprise that their names both feature in this list of noble yet cuddly boy names from the Nameberry forums this week 🧸

Berry @firefly305 writes:

I’m in search of names that are warm, friendly, noble, intelligent, and storybook-like. I imagine a curly-haired man with soft, kindly brown eyes. He’s wearing a dark green, cable-knit sweater with a book tucked underneath his arm.

The Name on Everyone’s Lips This Valentine’s Day

But the name on everyone’s lips right now isn’t one of the lilting, lyrical, love-related names usually associated with Valentine’s Day.

No, the baby name about to hit the big time is fierce, edgy Wolf 🐺

Along with other wild nature names like Fox, Bear and Hart, Wolf has been a Nameberry favorite for a while. Together with its more surnamey brother Wolfe, it has been used 13 times for Berry baby boys over the years.

Kieran Culkin chose Wilder Wolf for his son last August, then Princess Beatrice’s stepson Christopher Woolf “Wolfie” put the name in the news again, and just this week rapper Eve Cooper announced the arrival of her baby boy Wilde Wolf Fife Alexander Somers.

And now that it’s the newly revealed name of Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott’s baby boy, it’s sure to get much more attention from non-famous parents as well.

The History Behind the Unique Name Craze

This fascinating article from The Atlantic looks at the current craze for unique baby names in the context of American baby naming history. 

Discussing the shift in attitudes which saw the Top 10 names cover 28% of babies born in 1950, but only 7% today, author Joe Pinsker writes:

The coming turn toward novelty and distinctiveness… took hold in the 1960s. It was driven by a slew of broader shifts in daily life. As family sizes shrunk and kids stopped doing labor, Americans “started to fixate on the uniqueness of each child,” as the sociologist Philip Cohen has written, and “individuality emerged as a project—starting with naming—of creating an identity.”

If you’re a fan of unique baby names, be sure check out this week’s blog on the best names given to just 5 babies last year. They range from fresh nickname names like Ludo and Zeph, to extravagant rarities like Acheron and Joliet 😍