What's a cool name anyway?

Whether cutting-edge, casual or clunky, we all love names that make you go "Wow!"

When I was 17, I was scouring the shelves in a second-hand shop for baby name books — you do it too, right? — and I found a slim little volume called Cool Names for Babies. Little did I know the authors would soon launch a website called Nameberry, or that a decade later I'd be writing for it!

Anyway, that book gets to the core of what so many parents want, and name-lovers pursue: names that are cool. Desirable. Impressive. Ones that make people go “Wow!” or sometimes “What?”, but never “Meh".

Name trends keep moving on. Some of the wildest suggestions in the book (which was published in 2004) have gone mainstream: Maverick, Zaiden, Aria, Edith. But the goal remains the same. We're still hunting for the coolest names of today, and trying to predict those of tomorrow. It's been a running theme on the blog this week.

List of the week: 100 Best Names for 2021

The perfect combination of style, sound and substance right now.

Name of the week: Dinah

An charmingly clunky hipster name — so uncool it's cool — that we think one celebrity couple might just rejuvenate.

Style of the week: casual-cool boy names

They both love this style, but she says Cameron, he says Ziggy. Call in the Name Sage!

Still cool 😎