Nature Baby Names
Botanical, elemental and landscape names, with a note on which ones wear well on an adult.
Nature names are among the oldest there are. Long before names were abstract, people were called after the things around them — the flowers, the trees, the weather. Many of the names that now feel like ordinary given names started exactly this way and simply travelled far enough to lose the association.
They also solve a common problem neatly: most are unisex by origin, and most are immediately spellable, which is a rare combination in a distinctive name.
Will it still fit at forty?
The main risk with nature names is sweetness. A name that is delightful on a toddler can feel thin on an adult in a professional setting, and the softer botanical names are where this bites hardest.
A quick check: say the name in a sentence like "this is the report from —". Names that survive that survive everything. If one does not, it may work better as a middle name, where it keeps all its charm and carries none of the load.
Pick the register you want
Nature names split into recognisable groups. Flower names are the softest. Tree names are sturdier and read as more neutral. Landscape and weather names are the boldest of the three, and the most likely to be read as modern rather than traditional.
Mixing registers within a sibling set is worth thinking about in advance. A Poppy and a River are both nature names, but they do not sound like they came from the same family.
The names
Tap any name to add it to your list.
Plants and flowers
- Latin — The evergreen shrub
- Latin — The bay tree, a symbol of victory
- Latin — The olive tree, a symbol of peace
- Old English — A thorny shrub, wild rose
- Swedish — The flower, named for the botanist Anders Dahl
- Old English — The plant
- Old English — The meadow plant, associated with luck
- Germanic — The lime tree
- Old English — The tree with trembling leaves
- Greek, via Latin — The evergreen tree
Sky, water and landscape
- Latin — Dawn; the Roman goddess of the morning
- English — From the word itself
- Old English — Open uncultivated land
- Old English — The small, loud bird
- Latin — Of the sea
- Old French — The wild herb; also a reddish-brown
- Old French — Valley
- Gaelic — The rowan tree, traditionally protective
- Old English — Tempest
- Greek — Rainbow; also the flower
Nature names are unusually easy to over-collect — the category is large and almost everything in it is pleasant. If your list has grown past a dozen, a knockout round will cut it down far faster than deliberation.
Found a few you like? Take them to the games and let the voting do the narrowing — swipe through them one at a time, or put them straight into a bracket. Or browse the other name guides.