There are about 50 names on this thread that I completely love (some I would definitely be too chicken to use, some I'm seriously considering when I have kids in the next few years).
I love all sorts of word/nature names that I am not sure I'm crunchy granola enough to pull off (Indigo, Remember, Lyric, Rain, Huckleberry, Evening ...) and also Gaelic, Jewish and other ethnic names that I don't feel comfortable using since my family is 99% Puritan New England stock (Rivkah, Shoshannah, Ephraim, Eoghan, Oisin, Mattea/Matteo and Noemie).
Speaking of Puritan stock, my mom and her siblings were/are really into genealogy, and some of the family names I loved growing up for their sweet old-fashionedness have now become so popular that they're off the table, to my infinite sadness--Abigail, Hannah and Benjamin (as both a first and last name). My mother, who died a few years ago, was named Virginia--I would love to honor her by using her name, but can't imagine in this day and age using a name with the word virgin in it (even the origin of the name is from virgin, ultimately). I've thought of Ginger as an alternative, but it has its own sort of stripper connotations in many people's minds, sadly. Also, my grandparents are from a town called Chelsea; when I was little, a distant relative named her new baby Chelsea, and I remember saying to my mom "why'd they name her after a town?" (This was at the height of the name's popularity, mind.) Now I wish it wasn't so dated as a name, as I'd love to make the family reference.
There are quite a few girl's names that I love that seem too nickname-y or cutesy for me, imagining them on a grown-up woman: Pippa (sadly, I think Phillipa is ugly), Clover, Marigold, Tansy, Lainey, Tessa, Gemma. Several other names that I like for their sound have bad associations for me: Juliet, Scarlett, Susannah (that song!), Samson and Shiloh (not only because of the famous baby, but because it's a famous battlefield and that seems a bit macabre).
I love the name Willa, but fear that a little Willa born in the 2010s would spend her whole life saying "No, not Willow. Willa, with an -A."
I remember being fascinated by Picabo Street's name watching the Lillejammer Olympics--it just rolls off the tongue so beautifully, but I would never name a child after a random skier, so it may become a cat's name someday.
I am jealous of all of you who have used LOTR and Star Trek names. My two favorite authors are Lois McMaster Bujold and Terry Pratchett and the names of most of their characters are names I would never use. Most of LMB's are Russian-derived names and Terry Pratchett names his characters things like Bestiality Carter--along the "girls are named for virtues, so boys must be named for vices" line of thought--Havelock Vetinari, Moist Von Lipwig, Annabelle Dearheart, Gytha, things like that. The one Pratchett name I really like is Sam, for Sam Vimes, but it's such a common name and so popular right now, that it wouldn't be taken as a reference at all, and besides, I want to avoid very common names.
And finally, the last and definitely most "too chicken" name for me is Keziah. I had a favorite book about a gypsy girl in England named Keziah (Kizzy for short) when I was little, and I remember telling my mother that I wanted to have a little girl named Keziah. My mother, bless her (I swear) not actually terribly racist heart, said "that sounds like a colored name." Well, at the time it just sounded Bible-y and cool to me, but as I grew older, read a lot more, and left the all-white world of Vermont, I realized that just like Jemima, one of Job's other daughters, Keziah was so often used as a slave name in the antebellum south, that where both names are common in the UK, here in the US there is a very strong link with the African-American community. I hate to believe that would stop me from using a name that I still think is beautiful, but I think about that study with the resumes where subjects hired the candidates with "white" names over "non-white" names regardless of qualifications, and I quail at the thought of tagging my child with a name that is a liability. But, then I get mad because it shouldn't be a liability, and I hate the idea of turning into someone who would make a choice based on such stupid criteria. And I go back and forth....
)
Follow Mothering