From “August” to “Winter”: baby names that use the calendar for inspiration

Forget the baby name books and turn to your calendar for baby name inspiration!

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A child’s day, month or season of birth can take on another layer of meaning by inspiring their name, and it’s more common than you might think. A wide range of African names refer to a day of the week, and in many other parts of the world, baby names reference a season, such as the Finnish Suvi (Summer) and the Japanese Haruko (Spring child).

Days of the week baby names

• Tuesday: Tuesday’s child is full of grace, apparently, and this day name definitely has a certain elegance. Actress Tuesday Weld (who changed her name from Susan Ker Weld) helped this name climb the charts.
• Wednesday: The world’s most famous Wednesday is the Addams Family character played by Christina Ricci, and despite her macabre nature it has a certain something.
• Sunday: When Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban named their daughter Sunday the name became a real player among calendar-inspired baby names.

Months of the year baby names

• January: After the bestselling 1973 book Once is Not Enough, which featured a character called January Wayne and was later made into a movie, the first month of the year was the baby name choice for the 1978-born January Jones, who went on to become a Mad Men star.
• March: March is unlikely to ever be as popular as August as a baby boy month name, but it might appeal to parents looking for a shaper sound.
• April: Old-fashioned April was once the most popular month name, but has been overtaken by June for girls and August for boys. The French version Avril (as in Lavigne) gives the name an edge.
• May: Perhaps more popular as a middle name than a first name, May is nonetheless a fresh, pretty name which began as one of the many pet forms of Mary and Margaret.
• June: Another old-fashioned name that’s back on the radar as a middle name favorite, June is the name of Balthazar Getty’s daughter and the middle name of Amanda Peet’s daughter Molly.
• August: Although it’s more common for boys, August is known as a baby girl name too — singer Garth Brooks is one famous parent who chose it for his daughter.
• September: If you like a longer name than the springtime months offer, three-syllable September is a more contemporary choice.

Seasons of the year baby names

• Spring: Spring is the rarest season name, but Oscar- and Emmy-nominated actress Spring Byington is one famous bearer.
• Summer: Summer isn’t as popular now as it was in the 1970s, but it’s still in the U.S. top 200, perhaps due to TV and film characters in (500) Days of Summer, Napoleon Dynamite, Baywatch, The O.C. and The Mentalist.
• Autumn: The most popular of the four season names, Autumn reached an all-time high of No. 69 in 2011. Actress Jennifer Love Hewitt named her daughter Autumn James, and there’s even an Autumn in the royal family: Canada-born Autumn Kelly married Queen Elizabeth‘s oldest grandson, Peter Phillips, in 2008.
• Winter: Nicole Richie and Joel Madden are responsible for Winter’s position as an authentic baby name choice — they named their daughter Harlow Winter Kate. Actress Gretchen Mol and media boss Sean Parker chose Winter for first names. But Winter has a far longer history as a baby name; it was used as a a first name as early as the seventeenth century.

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