Roses and Cellar Doors

What begins with A? Lots of smallish girls' names, and they also end that way: Abha  (ahb-hah, Hindi)--"light, luster" Ac...

Poor Molly . Is she a nickname, or a full given name? I guess the answer is 'both': Molly was originally a regional pronunciation of...

I really need to come up with a better title for these posts--I'm rapidly running out of "usual" nicknames! Anyway, I see Oz  ...

Okay, yet again , not really a usual nickname, but a nickname-y full name. Happy and off-beat, it's not surprising that Sunny   (as well...

I haven't done this one yet? Really?? *hangs head in shame* Originally short for Millicent , Mildred , and other musty Germanic names, ...

That's a double-V, not a W. ;) Evie  is one of the fasting-rising nicknames, from traditional picks like  Evelyn, Eva, & Evangeline...

Oh, poor Agnes . Once one of the most popular girls names in all the English-speaking world, she fell off the charts in the early 70s, and h...

While doing my virtue-names post a while back, I came across many names with meanings that weren't quite  virtues. While naming your da...

I've dedicated quite a few posts to names that stand out. But what if you want a name that's modern, but not too weird or derivative...

Guy  is a bit odd. Most people today consider it a slang term rather than a name, and that's not completely unreasonable, since it's...

May flowers! Happy, uh, May Day? We'll go with that. On the heels of my bird-themed post, a flower-themed post also seemed like a fun i...

With all the names that Nell  is historically short for, it's surprising it's not more popular. The usual suspects include Helen , E...

I admit, sometimes I come across fun new names, and have to come up with a way to work them into a post (without being ridiculously obvious,...

There are about as many different ways to form nicknames as there are cultures. While many nicknames for our most enduring classics seem out...

George . It's one of those names where the consensus is split pretty evenly--some think it's purely boring, stodgy old-man, and some...

Poor Anne is often held as the epitome of 'boring' names. And yet, she's also one of the most common contributors to compound n...

Jacob --a seeming contradiction; both traditional and trendy. It was a top name back when the SSA started keeping track over 120 years ago, ...