Our baby boy's name options

Anderson shot up quite a bit on the popular names list in the 2000's, no doubt in large part due to the prominence of white-haired cable newsman Anderson Cooper. Perhaps surprisingly though, Anderson was even higher on the list in 1880. Actress Edie Falco named her son Anderson in 2005. Though there haven't been many first-named Anderson namesakes, there have been countless notables bearing the surname, including Hans Christian, Marian, Maxwell, Sherwood, Gillian, Laurie, and Pamela.

Beckett is one of the big baby name hits of the decade.

Claude is a soft-spoken French name that conjures up the pastel colors of Monet and harmonies of Debussy. In France, it is used for girls as well, in fact in the Tracy Chevalier novel Lady and the Unicorn, the protagonist is a female Claude.

Everett is a preppy but outdoorsy name, with wintery New England vibes. In the last decade, it’s had a leap in popularity, perhaps because of its similarity to trendy girls’ names like Ava and Scarlett, or perhaps because it offers a fresh alternative to 90’s style Evan and Brett.

Henry is back. The classic Henry climbed back onto the Top 10 in the US in 2021 for the first time in over a century, and now stands at Number 7.

Oliver is an international star, ranking near the top of the charts in the US and throughout the English-speaking world, along with a host of European and Latin American countries, from Norway to Chile, Slovenia to Switzerland.

This simple, elegant name offers something for many kinds of parents, from writers and history buffs to photographers to Pennsylvania dwellers. Most famous bearers are comedian Penn Jillette and Gossip Girl hottie Penn Badgley, both of whom were given this distinctive name at birth. Long obscure, Penn seems destined for greater usage.

This jaunty unisex nickname name has recently been given a shot of testosterone via actor Tobey Maguire and the gruff, erudite character on West Wing.

Whitman, a namesake surname for poet Walt, would be much more suited to a boy, probably because of that "man" part. Whit or Witt makes an uplifting short form which can be used on its own.

If you discount the connection to the controversial Whittaker Chambers in the days of the Red Scare, Whittaker is a pleasant enough British surname with the preppyish nickname Whit.