Nature names: Will trees be the new flower names?

Posted in Name my baby
by Lorain County Moms

nameberry.com

Now that just about every flower in the garden has been dug up and used by baby namers for at least a century, maybe it’s time to look to their more imposing cousins. There’s a very big difference between the two: Where most floral names are frilly and feminine, many, if not most, arboreal names are strong, sturdy, and much more masculine.

The forest is fairly unexplored territory; with the exception of a few names like Hazel, Olive and Willow, most of the standard tree names are just waiting to be discovered. Here are some possibilities:

Tree names for girls

• ACACIA
• APPLE
• ASPEN
• BAY
• CASSIA
• CHERRY
• CINNAMON
• CITRON
• EBONY
• HAZEL
• HOLLY
• JACARANDA
• JUNIPER
• LAUREL
• LINDEN
• MAGNOLIA
• MIMOSA
• MYRTLE
• OLIVE
• PLUM
• SENNA
• SEQUOIA
• WILLOW

Tree names for boys

• ALDER
• ASH
• ASPEN
• BALSAM
• BAMBOO
• BANYAN
• BAY
• BEECH
• BIRCH
• CEDAR
• CYPRESS
• ELM
• JUNIPER
• LINDEN
• MAPLE
• OAK
• PINE
• QUINCE
• TEAK
• YEW

Tree-related names

• BRANCH
• FOREST
• GROVE
• LEAF
• MOSS
• SHADE
• SYLVAN

Almost every ethnicity’s name bank has a profusion of names related to nature, and that includes trees. Here’s a small sampling of foreign names related to trees:

• ALAQUA — Native American, sweet gum tree
• ALON, ALONA — Hebrew, oak tree
• BIRK — Scottish, birch tree
• ILANA — Hebrew, tree
• IOBHAR (ee-var) — Irish, yew
• LINNEA — Scandinavian, lime or linden tree
• LLORA — Catalan, laurel tree
• MAC DARA — Irish, son of the oak
• MANJOLA — Albanian, magnolia
• MATSUKO — Japanese, pine tree child
• NAOKI — Japanese, straight tree
• OIHANE (oy-ah-neh) — Basque, from the forest
• OLIVIER — French, olive tree
• OREN — Hebrew, pine tree
• ORNA — Hebrew, pine tree
• ORNELLA — Italian, flowering ash tree
• SUZUKI — Japanese, bell tree
• TAMAR — Hebrew, palm tree
• YVES, YVETTE — French, yew tree

Nameberry (http://nameberry.com) is a baby-naming site produced by Pamela Redmond Satran and Linda Rosenkrantz, co-authors of 10 bestselling baby name guides, including the newest, “Beyond Ave and Aiden: The Enlightened Guide to Naming Your Baby.”