Hebe is the Goddess of Youth, Cupbearer to the Gods -in Greek mythology. It's also the name of a beautiful shrub with white or purple flowers. Hebes are getting very popular in the UK, but cannot take the Michigan weather. Very gutted to leave my garden of Hebes I was, when we emmigrated. :(

Still.... at least I get to laugh at people called Randy over here..... :p

wow three good post on my first day :)

My daughters names is Grey Autum Hill
(no i don't mind that i gave her full name)
and the weird thing was i didn't realize the scheme of it till
after we decided on the name My wife wanted to name her
autum green but I didn't like it but I though grey would be a
nice name then to please my wife i said how about
grey autum then our last name being hill i only realized
about a few days later the whole scope of the name
I get alot of she is going to be a rock star or artist with a name like that
(although she is an awsome artist for 3)
like somehow if you have a diffrent name other than the normal U.S. set you have to be an artist or musician
on that thought I'm making it my lifes work to make sure my daughter ends up as an accountant or claims adjuster just to prove all those weird Sons Of Bitches wrong

that would be cool if his last name was Jeebie.

max is going to be very common when he is in school.

caleb, jacob, michael, matthew, too

I need to know your last name to really be of any help, though. a lot of n's isn't working.

brennan?

why not embrace the n? ned, nanook, Ivan, noah

i like Magnus, but didn't have the balls to do it.....so....Spencer .....fits perfectly (i guess this is mainly true, as you always know a child by their name)

be cognizant of potential nicknames and abbreviations, too.

read the Illiad for some pretty groovy old names. Uripedes, Achilles, Agamemnon

nevermind

Baloney! Common-ness is possibly my number-one concern, you can bet I've researched it. In 2004 (2005 data not being 100% compiled yet), Max was the 73rd most popular boys' name, behind such notables as:

68. Isaiah
64. Hayden
58. Liam
35. Brayden
23. Jackson
15. Jayden

I can live with 73rd.

How about just plain, old "clodfobble jr."?

What the hell kinds of names are Brayden and Jayden? Those are just damn stupid. They are not even names, dammit.

Be careful going by those lists of common names. They are drawn from the nation as a whole, not from your community, or the social circles you will be travelling in. A name that is number 73 on that list may very well be a top ten name in your community.

In 1999, we didn't want our daughter to have a common name. We researched the lists. We wanted to name her after my grandmother, Isabel. Isabel, the year before she was born wasn't even in the top 100 names. But Isabella was something like number 98. We figured it would be fine. The only Isabel I knew was the next door neighbor's ten year old daughter. Well, after naming her Isabel, we have found out that it's a faily common name around here. She's already been in classes with other Isabels, where the teachers had to use their full names to call on them. And they named a freakin' hurricane after her. She didn't like that.

I laughted at this, until I checked the UK list for 2005 - and there at #84 was Jayden. Bizarre - I've never heard of it before.

Delighted to see that the names I'd like to inflict on any boy-child of mine aren't there, although it's the reverse with girl's names. Just have to hope that by the time I decide I want babies, the names have dropped off the list again....

Use the name generator on World of Warcraft or a similar RPG.

Aggramaxxoneith or something

Congratulations! Be prepared for the ride of your life. First, one of the best books out there is Natural Childbirth: the Bradley Way by Susan McCutcheon. I read EVERYTHING I could get my hands on the first time around and still felt as though I didn't have enough info. I found this book my second pregnancy and felt as though I had found the light. Lots of good stuff on nutrition, nursing, physical and emotional aspects of labor. Be warned that there are lots of pictures of labor with no clothing. So, if you are squeamish about that, sorry. I had an OB nurse tell me she got more in depth info from that than from her training.

Names are fun and oh so personal. Just find something that resonates with you and "daddy". Your little boy will fit into whatever name you pick. Although, you might want to steer clear of fruit names.......

There's a very cool name page here. It shows the most popular names in the US over the last century on a dynamic graph. Lots of fun.

What an awesome page!

Check out "Susan," which I always think of as a common name. It was number 3 in the 1960s and fell to 565 in 2004.

Check out Adolph. It really drops off in the 1930s and 1940s. But is seems to start its slide in the 1920s. So maybe it has nothing to do with the famous one after all.

Look at the results for Farrah. What a hoot. Courtney had a big push in the 90s. What does that tell you about American society?

I can't think of any instances like that for guys names.

Because guys, unless you are one of the Phoenixes, tend to have normal sorts of names.