Q&A: What's a unique gender neutral baby name?

Interview any pediatrician, schoolteacher, and police officer about the unusual names they've encountered in their careers and you are sure to be astounded by the variety, randomness, and ingenuity you might hear: Vaseline Green, Sal Minella, Lord Almighty, Moonshine, Female ... you couldn't make these up!

In my own experience, I've met a boy named Xenophobia (nickname: Xeno) in the playground. More recently, two enterprising couples, one in New Zealand and one in China, endeavored to name their children 4Real and @ in their quest for an unusual name. Both couples were turned down and last we heard, 4Real's parents had set their sights on Superman instead.

No matter how striking or rare or unknown a name may be, without you, there's no context or love in the details. Your best bet is to find names that have a personal thread or element of discovery: Try something overheard, picked up during travels or conversations, revived in modern times. You could fuse favorite words, names, elements, and sounds together to invent a name. (Get started using our Name Generator tool.)

And remember, if you succeed in your mission to find a perfectly unique name, you can bet your stunner will be followed, imitated, and adapted in countless ways. There were eight Nevaehs in 1999. (Thanks to an MTV appearance made by P.O.D.'s Sonny Sandoval in 2000, the number of newborn Nevaehs has climbed to 25,435.) So while your Yara, Hadon, or Eadda might be the only one in her class now, you can't gauge how her schoolmates' copycat parents might react!