Choosing a name for your little one can be an emotionally charged task, but one baby name consultant thinks it’s actually more difficult for parents to find boy names than girl names they truly love.
“Historically, people have been less willing to get adventurous with boy names,” baby naming consultant Colleen Slagen tells TODAY.com.
She suspects that a large reason why parents play it safe with boy names is due to “society’s expectations and stereotypes of men versus women, and like the potential that they’re able to see.”
For boys, “so many of those names get reused, reused, reused. Like John,” she points out.
Parents have a bit more imagination when it comes to envisioning their daughter’s future. “With girls, you’re able to venture into these different style categories that you still feel like maybe a girl could embrace, like creative names, romantic names, art scene names, indie names,” she says.
So what do future parents of boys look for? In a TikTok video she made on this topic in December 2024, Slagen said, “For boys, what I always hear is, ‘I want something classic but not too popular.’”
For those parents, she offers a list of traditional — but not overused — boy names.
- Andrew
- Alexander
- Adam
- Charles
- Christopher (Kit)
- Daniel
- David
- Edward
- Francis
- Isaac
- Luke
- Matthew
- Michael
- Noah
- Peter
- Phillip
- Robert (Bobby)
- Samuel (Sammy)
- Simon
- Thomas
- William (Wiley)
- Zachary
More baby naming tips and trends from Colleen Slagen
One way to make an often-used name feel a bit more fresh or unique is to choose a more creative nickname, like those listed above.
She also suggests searching for “vintage” names as opposed to “classic” names.
Classic names are those that have never gone out of style. Vintage names, however, were established a long time ago but trailed off in popularity before starting a recent rise in naming trends. She considers names like Winston and August to be vintage names.
