Category: names that mean star
Nature names have been popular for several years now, especially for girls. Flower names such as Lily and Ivy are the most popular, but we’ve also heard a lot of tree names such as Willow, water names like Bay and Lake, and animal names such as Wren.
And then there are the names that keep their nature connection more on the down low. Girls’ names that have a nature-related meaning may appeal to parents in search of something that’s more name and less word, a name that keeps its relationship to nature as a wonderful secret.
Girls’ names with a surprise nature connection, and their meanings, include:
Nature names — our topic in honor of Earth Day — today usually come right out and announce themselves. Popular categories of nature names include flower names — Daisy, Lily; tree names — Oak, Acacia; animal names — Fox, Wren; and water names — Bay, Lake.
And then there are those nature names that are not obviously nature names but on the surface seem more like surnames or place names or even, stunningly, actual name names. What makes them nature names is their root meaning, a factor that sometimes gets lost in the more contemporary associations of a name.
Parents in search of a name that connotes sun or star, land or water without being too blatant about it might want to consider one of these lovely secret nature names. We picked a selection suiting varied tastes for girls, boys, and either. And there are hundreds more to be found by searching for nature names on nameberry’s supersearch page.
- Araceli, “altar of the sky”
- Bronte, “thunder”
- Bryn, “hill”
- Cordelia, “daughter of the sea”
- Crisanta, “chrysanthemum”
Many parents — more and more, it seems — wait until the baby arrives to settle on a name. Some want to see what it looks like and try to gauge its incipient personality (not always easy), and some want to tie it into the circumstances of the baby’s birth–a practice seen in a number of earlier cultures. This could be the season of arrival–Summer or Autumn–or the month, as in June or January, or the day of the week, as in Sunday Rose Kidman Urban (actually born on a Monday).
Another option is commemorating the time of day or night of the baby’s arrival. There are any number of names associated with sun and moon gods and goddesses, as well as names whose meanings refer to day and night, stars, dawn, sun and moon, in both western and eastern cultures. Some of them worth considering are: