124 Super-Unique Baby Names You Won’t Hear on the Playground

For the boys:

1. Auberon (Trying to get in on that Shakespeare thing, but not really committing.)
2. Averill (We feel nothing.)
3. Bard (Oh, God. The pressure. What is with the Shakespeare nods?)
4. Bas (An unfinished name. Bast? Bass? Bassoon?)
5. Basie (Now that has potential cool written all over it.)
6. Beach (Nope. Nope-ity nope, nope, and you know better.)
7. Cassio (A digital keyboard our grandma bought us in 1983, but with an extra ‘s.’)
8. Cathal (Hmm. A little sterile for our liking, but OK.)
9. Corentin (A blood-thinning medication or a cool kid who started drumming at age 3.)
10. Drummer (But you might as well go with this one if you want a drummer.)
11. Eleazer (Charles Dickens is giving you a thumbs-up from the grave.)
12. Falconer (Please tell us your family can identify a falcon in a bird lineup.)
13. Fenno (A household product of ill repute.)
14. Florent (Scratching our heads.)
15. Gower (Hobbit vibe. Not bad if you like Hobbits.)
16. Gulliver (Traveling folk, take heed.)
17. Hiawatha (We see all kinds of problems with this. But if you like to live dangerously…)
18. Humphrey (Yes. Why didn’t we think of Humphrey? This one deserves a rebirth.)
19. Kassian (Character on One Life to Live? Greek tycoon? Choose your own adventure.)
20. Kermit (Don’t let your son live life upstaged by a frog puppet. Just don’t.)
21. Land (“Land ho!” jokes might get old.)
22. Ludovic (Again, you’d better be crazy Slavic.)
23. Merce (Brief and to the point. Succinct. Not bad.)
24. Mingus (Pretty sure Norman Reedus has a son with this name. Jazz lovers only.)
25. Moe (One of us at the office has a 17-pound, dumb-as-rocks cat with this name. You’ve been warned.)
26. Nat (The guy who makes bad metal sculpture and sleeps with his motorcycle by his bed. Not that we have slept with this guy or anything.)
27. Nicholson (If “REDRUM” means nothing to you, sure, snap this one up.)
28. Night (Deeply confusing all around.)
29. Osgood (Better than Osbad.)
30. Pagan (Oh, you are just dying to be different, aren’t you?)
31. Per (Ooh, Scandinavian Ikea glassware flair! Likey!)
32. Pim (Better for a lass, maybe?)
33. Piran (No idea. Who are you, Piran? What moves you?)
34. Placido (Opera star or family cow. Only you know.)
35. Puck (Because Puck could be a boy or a girl. Either way, is it clever enough to deal with the unfortunate rhymes?)
36. Rancher (Caveat: You cannot live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and expect this to fly.)
37. Raoul (We have no prob with Raoul.)
38. Roald (Nice literary nod there.)
39. Romilly (Again, maybe this works better on the girl list?)
40. Roone (Sweet! Simple, no-fuss, different. Underdog worthy of a second look.)
41. Rudyard (We like Kipling better, frankly.)
42. Runyon (I think we need a dictionary.)
43. Salmon (YOU CAN’T. PLEASE, LORD, NO. The kid will get “swimming upstream” jokes and cultivate an inferiority complex.)
44. Scorpio (Another for the “only if your life is an ’80s soap opera” files.)
45. Septimus (Sure, but have six other children first.)
46. Sim (Trim Sim. Kinda approve.)
47. Spike (You’d better have tattoos and earplugs, parents.)
48. Story (Future English professor with besotted students.)
49. Taddeo (Tad, inevitably.)
50. Thibault (TEE-BOW. Which might make some think of Tim Tebow. But that’s on you.)
51. Thoreau (If you can’t name three things Thoreau wrote, opt out.)
52. Tibor (Slavs rule!)
53. Traveler (So painfully on the nose. May we suggest “Trav”?)
54. Trout (What is with the fish?)
55. Umberto (Like strapping a boulder to your child’s back, but we won’t judge.)
56. Whistler (Only you know Whistler’s mother and what she’d think. Because, you know…that’s YOU.)

So there you have it, folks. There might be a gem in here for your newborn… or hey, maybe Liam and Emma will do the job just fine.

A version of this story was originally published in June 2017.