The Art of Naming

In light of my most recent list of names, today's Name of the Day is a feminine virtue name: Verity.

This name is Latin meaning "truth." If you know some Latin-based languages, you would recognize the root of the word. Verdad in Spanish, Vrai or Vérité in French, Vero or Verità in Italian, etc, which are also sometimes used as names. Or you could always straight-up go with the name "True" if you wanted. However, of all these, I think Verity has the prettiest sound, especially if you live in an English-speaking country. (If you have Latin roots, by all means, use one of the options above.)


The name Verity is one of the virtue names that originated with the Puritans in the 17th century. They put such value and importance on the meaning of names that they began giving these virtue words as names. Other popular ones are Grace, Hope, Joy and Faith. However, I like to find the more unusual ones. While Verity currently ranks at #360 in England/Wales, it is rarely used these days in the US.

In 2012, there were 51 girls given the name Verity, which ranked the name at #3232 on the popularity charts. If you recall, the names aren't recorded unless there are at least 5 births per year. Therefore, the first recorded usage of the name Verity did not occur until 1966 when 6 baby girls were born. After that, it wasn't used again until 1973. From 1973 to 2006, the name was barely used, (an average of 10 babies per year.)

But then in 2007, popularity increased to 41 babies from 19 the year before. However, 2012 is indeed the year that has seen the most usage and it also has the highest ranking in modern history. (Makes you wonder how many Puritans were given this name back in the day, huh?)

Source

If you're curious about the modern day usage, there have only been 582 baby girls ever named Verity in the recorded US history of names. If you use Verity, the chances of your daughter having a unique name are very good! Yet it is not hard to pronounce or unfamiliar! Score!

What do you think of this virtue name? Would you use it in the first name spot or the middle name spot?

Sibling Name Ideas:
Sisters: Amabel, Evangeline Felicity, Grace, Hope, Lavinia, Primrose, Temperance
Brothers: Alistair, Honor, Joshua, Merritt, Miles, Peregrine, Vincent, Will

Middle Name Ideas:
Verity Anne
Verity Evelyn
Verity Lucille
Verity Katherine
Verity Jane

As a Middle Name:
Olivia Verity
Amelia Verity
Sarah Verity
Abigail Verity
Mabel Verity

Virtue names are usually accredited to the Puritans for their earliest, most-frequent usage. However, names that had powerful and important meanings were also popular with Ancient Greeks and Romans. Around 1590, the Puritan movement developed as a sect of the Church of England. They began using the names of saints and martyrs instead of virtue names by order of the Catholic Church.

Then the Puritans fled to America to escape religious persecution. It was then that they freely used their virtue names, as well as phrase names and scriptural names such as "Fight the good fight of Faith" as a name. While these long phrase names didn't catch on, many of the virtue names did and are still in use today. Here is a list of both popular and not-so-popular virtue names for boys and girls:

Girls: 

Amity
Charity
Clarity
Clemency
Comfort
Constance
Faith
Felicity
Fidelity
Grace
Honor
Hope
Joy
Mercy
Merritt
Modesty
Patience
Prudence
Remember
Sage
Serenity
Sincere
Sincerity
Temperance
Tranquility
Unity
Verity

Boys: 

Able
Anchor
Bravery
Bright
Calm
Chance
Constantine
Hardy
Free
Freedom
Harbor
Increase
Justice
Loyal
Lucky
Merit
Noble
Pax
Prosper
Revere
Sage
Sincere
Tranquil
True
Valor
Vigor
Worth
Zen

Can you think of any good ones that I missed?

Today's Name of the Day is the boy name Everett. This is an English variation of the German name Eberhard meaning "brave as a wild boar."


This is a name that is quickly climbing back up the popularity charts. If you go by rank alone, Everett was at its peak in 1906 with a ranking of #81. In 2012 it ranked at #214 which is up from #534 in 2005.

If you go by the number of babies born each year, there are two notable peaks in usage. The first is in 1912 when the name shot up with 424 births more than the previous year. Then it really spiked, averaging 1,500 or more babies every year from 1914 until the early 1930s.

Then it started to decline until it started gaining momentum again in the mid 2000s. Its new highest peak is in 2012 when there were 1,724 boys named Everett.

Source

This name has cute nickname options such as Ever or Rhett. I believe Everett's rise in popularity in the past few years is because of similar trendy girl names Eva and Ava and their variants. Many parents view the crisp V sound as stylish. However, there were 21 girls given the name Everett in 2012.

As for the history of the name Everett, it came from the English surname Everard which was introduced to England by the Normans. Everard has Germanic elements to it such as "eber" meaning wild boar, and  "hard" meaning brave or hardy. This name has rarely been used since medieval times, but Everett is clearly gaining popularity in the modern world.

What do you think of the name Everett? Is it on your list or do you prefer similar name Emmett instead?

Sibling Name Ideas: 
Sisters: Audrey, Caroline, Ella, Harper, Olivia, Ruth
Brothers: Asher, Blake, Griffin, Nathan, Owen, Sawyer

Middle Name Ideas:
Everett Carter
Everett James
Everett Lucas
Everett August
Everett Paul

As a Middle Name:
John Everett
Henry Everett
Braden Everett
Zane Everett

There are so many different classifications of names. Of course you know about the most obvious ones like Classic names or "Yoonik" (Misspelled) Names. What are some of the newish classifications or trends? Here are two that I've heard about recently:

Liquid Names

These names were first classified over on The Baby Name Wizard by blogger Laura Wattenberg. She defined these as names that flow smoothly. Many, if not most of these names have every sound drawn out (long vowels) they don't require much mouth movement such as Aliya or Eliana. These names tend to have three or more syllables and there are fewer consonant sounds than syllables. Letters allowed to be used in this trend include L, R, N, Y and H.  Some examples:

Aaliyah
Arianna
Liliana
Alaina
Eliana
Aria
Elena
Aurora
Alana
Aniyah
Ariel
Alina
Elaina
Liana
Anaya

Is this a trend that you like or is it just too smooth? Some people like more crunch to their names.

Raindrop Names 

In addition to these liquid names are what Laura coined "raindrop names" that are also smooth with the same type of sounds, but they are shorter. In fact, they pack two or more syllables into four or fewer letters. Included in this trend are the letters M, L, N, R and Y.

Examples of names like these are Liam and Mia which both cracked the top 10 last year. Mila, Leo, Eli and Ayla are popular as well as Arya, Noah, Mira and Nora. Do you see the pattern? These types of names are huge right now.  In the past, a great example that was highly used is the name Mary.

Raindrop Girls:

Amy
Anna
Anya
Aria
Arya
Ayla
Ella
Emma
Erin
Isla
Lana
Leah
Lena
Lia
Lila
Lily
Lola
Luna
Lyla
Mara
Mary
Maya
Mia
Mila
Mya
Nina
Nola
Nora
Nyla
Rina
Yael

Raindrop Boys:

Alan
Ali
Amir
Ari
Arlo
Elam
Eli
Ian
Leo
Leon
Liam
Milo
Noah
Noam
Noel
Omar
Owen
Raul
Rory
Ryan

What do you think of Liquid Names and Raindrop Names? Do you like one trend more than the other? Let me know!

Today's Name of the Day is Helena. This name is the Latin form of the name Helen, which has a ton of history. Most notably, there is Helen of Troy who was the daughter of Zeus and Leda in Greek mythology. She was kidnapped by Paris and was the cause of the great Trojan War. And a more modern example was Helen Keller who overcame being blind and deaf.

While Helen is a strong name, I prefer the girlier Helena. I like to pronounce it Hel-AY-na as opposed to Hel-EN-ah, but both are pretty!


This Latin name means "bright, shining one" which is a lovely meaning. Helena was used for two characters in Shakespeare's works, one in "All's Well That Ends Well" and one in "A Midsummer's Night Dream."  Another Helena was a 4th-century saint who was the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine.

The name Helena translates well around the world. In 2012, it ranked at #560 in the US, #328 in England/Wales, #194 in France and #243 in the Netherlands. It is even more popular in Austria (#30), Croatia (#35) Poland (#45) and Belgium (#55).

As for Helena's history in the US, it has always been in the Top 1000, except for 1992 when it dipped down to #1008. It has been a fairly consistent name. It's largest popularity spikes occurred in 1918 with 488 babies born, and 2006 with 595 babies born.

Source

Still, if you consider the 200-500 or so babies born every year named Helena, this name is not very popular when compared to names that spike up to 10,000+ births a year.

I would say this is is a very lovely, classic choice that is both familiar but not overly used. What do you think of Helena? How do you pronounce it? Do you prefer Helen or Ellen instead?  Let me know below!

Sibling Name Ideas:
Sisters: Catherine, Esther, Freya, Isabella, Lucille, Sophia
Brothers: Arthur, Daniel, Edward, James, Michael, Thomas

Middle Name Ideas:
Helena Simone
Helena Juliet
Helena Eve
Helena Mabel
Helena Jane

As a Middle Name:
Natalie Helena
Lucy Helena
Violet Helena
June Helena
Alice Helena

Today's blog post analyzed the name Elizabeth, so I thought I would go a bit more "classic" than usual with the "Name of the Day.'  I chose the handsome Frederick.

Baby Profile by Vera Kratochvil

When pondering classic and even regal names, there is one that almost always comes to mind: Elizabeth. This perpetually popular name surely has a good reason for remaining as such! But what is that reason? Beyond its elegance and beauty, Elizabeth tends to flow very well with many names. This is one of the reasons that it has remained within the Top 30 every single year since 1880.

But why does it pair so well? Elizabeth is used for both a first and middle name. People love Elizabeth as a first name because of how versatile the nicknames are, ranging from Ellie to Liz to Betsy to Beth, and many many more in between.

In this instance, we shall investigate why Elizabeth works so well as a middle name. Many people clump it in with all the other "filler" or "connector" middle names that simply fill an empty spot between the first and last names, such as Anne, Grace, Marie, Claire, etc. However, many argue that Elizabeth doesn't deserve to be classified as such. Rather, despite its popularity, it is somewhat one-of-a-kind.

1.) It starts with a vowel, which is appealing, but the "L" tends to get most of the sound emphasis which allows Elizabeth to flow with names that end with a vowel.

2.) The overall stress of the full name is put on the second syllable which helps to connect it to the first with a beautiful flow.

3.) The four-syllable length of Elizabeth makes it long-but-not-too-long. In many cases, four syllables is the perfect length to differentiate it from the first name before introducing you to the last name. For example, Clara Elizabeth Miller tends to roll off the tongue slightly better than a shorter middle name like Clara Leigh Miller. One might hear it incorrectly as "Claralee or Claraly." Whereas Elizabeth makes a bold but graceful stance in its own place.

4.) The name ends with a consonant sound that isn't often heard in other names. (How many can you think of that end with -th?)  Most first names used today end with -a, -e, -n, -r or -y, which pair perfectly with the different beginning AND ending of Elizabeth.

Much of Elizabeth's success is undoubtedly due to the reasons listed above. The combination of them makes this name very versatile yet unique.

If you are looking for other options instead of Elizabeth, you'd do well to examine other four-syllable names with the stress on the second syllable. Most of these will also flow very beautifully with almost any first name.Test out your favorite first names with the names below as the middle name, and then try it with Elizabeth. Which do you prefer?

Amelia
Aurelia
Bidelia
Calliope
Camellia
Cecelia
Cordelia
Evangeline
Eulalia
Hermione
Hortensia
Ignacia
Leticia
Magnolia
Natalia
Octavia
Olivia
Ophelia
Penelope
Persephone
Valencia
Veronica
Victoria
Zenobia

If you notice, the majority of these names end with A. If you refer back to my fourth point above, many feminine first names seem to end with A as well. While some parents find the rhyming to be cute, most will agree that Sarah Octavia, for example, is too much A sound. Whereas Sadie Octavia sounds much better. However, because of Elizabeth's different ending, Sarah Elizabeth and Sadie Elizabeth both work.

If you are interested in using one of the names listed above, one way to avoid the repetitious endings (like Sarah Octavia) is to end the first and middle names with different vowel sounds. For example, Stella Calliope or Lily Veronica.

Also, ending the first name with a consonant helps, like Piper Cordelia or Caitlin Amelia.  Or use a middle name that ends in a consonant-sound like Evangeline. Sophia Evangeline or Hadley Evangeline work very well!

It is clearly all up to interpretation and personal taste. Even different accents may throw this theory off. But there has to be a reason why Elizabeth has remained so consistently used over the past 132 recorded years. Elizabeth has never ranked higher than #26, and even then there were upwards of 10,000 babies who bore the name.

Very few other names in history have stats like this.

Do you like the name Elizabeth or would you opt for one of the other options instead?