Here Are This Year's Coolest Hipster Baby Names
There's a fine line between a name that's quirky and unique and one that's so unusual that it's bound to get your kid teased on the playground. While you don't want your kid to be one of 10 with the same name in their class, you also don't want to scar them for life. Like, don't name your kid Plate or Garbage, but hopefully, that's common sense.
Baby name site Nameberry's list of hipster names for 2017 attempts to strike that delicate balance between trendy and still rare enough to qualify as "hipster." Of course, by virtue of the fluid nature of hipness, it's unlikely that this year's so-called group of cool names will remain that way for long. You definitely won't find these on any year-end most popular names list, given how the general concept of being 'hipster' revolves around going against the grain.
The baby name site separated their list into five categories.
The first, "vintage" hipster names, includes options that were once en vogue but are now considered old-fashioned. For the most part, those listed include what are widely considered "old people names" (ones given frequently in previous generations, explaining why you and everyone you know probably has at least one Great Aunt Mary). Ida, Minerva, Esther, Nancy, Pearl, Harriet, and Theodosia (which I'm guessing will get a big boost, courtesy of Hamilton) were included under girls' names for this section, while boys' names like Albert, Ira, Bernard, Wilfred, Chester, and Edmund made the cut.
The second tackles "exotic" hipster names – or international options that aren't "trying too hard to be pretty," with a particular focus on names from cultures that don't often get repped in the baby name game. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds may have been inspired by this category, since their second daughter's name Ines (Portuguese) was listed, along with plenty of other vowel-ending choices like Esmeralda, Flavia, Noa, Saskia, and Io. Slavic names reigned under the boys' category: Dimitri, Ivan, Boris, and Vladimir were among the listed options.
The third category, with nature-inspired hipster names, didn't include obvious options, like any number of forever-popular flower names for girls. Instead, there were more "rustic" choices from "further afield," like Lavender (perfect for a Harry Potter superfan), Blossom (perfect for a '90s sitcom superfan), and Huckleberry (perfect for a, um, Mark Twain superfan...?), among other plant- and animal-inspired names.
Geek-chic hipster names comprise the fourth group, which mostly listed names that have long since fallen out of fashion – but with a "nerdier" twist. Options like Barbara for girls and Leonard or Sheldon for boys will be familiar to Stranger Things and The Big Bang Theory fans.
The final category included hipster hero-inspired names, options taken from the first and last names of so-called "hipster icons" (for the most part, figures involved directly or indirectly with the arts). Amadeus (for Mozart), Baldwin (for James Baldwin), Hamilton (🎶 Alexander Hamilton 🎶), Zelda (for F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife), and Ulysses (for James Joyce's magnum opus) were all represented across the male and female sections.
As with most hipster fashions, you'll want to pen one of these on your 2017 baby's birth certificate ASAP lest they become too cool and fade out of style.
(h/t Huffington Post)
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