Zooey Deschanel is pregnant! She and boyfriend Jacob Pechenik have had a busy year, announcing their engagement shortly after news broke confirming their impending bundle of awkward, quirky joy. "Jacob and I are over the moon," she told People. "We are so excited to meet our little one." So are we, Zooey. So are we. This baby name is going to be gold. Carefully curated, authentic gold. In case she needs a little inspiration, we brainstormed 40 adorkable baby name options that suit her multifaceted personality.
Hipster baby names
It's not that I think it's likely Zooey's baby will ride down the birth canal on a fixie, more that I feel uncomfortable ruling out the possibility.
Literary baby names
Zooey's parents named her after the male protagonist of J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey. If she wants to keep the tradition going, she needs some off-the-wall character inspiration. Ninetta would be a poignant baby name choice for a daughter — in Nicholas Nickleby, she's the talented daughter of two actors.
- Amory: from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise
- Bathsheba: from Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd
- Binx: from Walker Percy's The Moviegoer
- Eglantine: from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
- Hester: from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
- Japhy: from Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums
- Kilgore: from various novels by Kurt Vonnegut
- Rodion: from Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment
- Rufus: from George Eliot's Felix Holt: The Radical
Baby names from nature
Zooey isn't going with something like Daisy or Rose. We guess her botanical baby name choices will be a bit more out there. Or maybe an animal-themed baby name would be more up her earth-loving alley.
Totally ironic baby names
I am not endorsing these baby names for people who want to name babies, but celebrities keep pushing the envelope. There are only so many hipster noun names to go around, it's time to think outside the PBR can.
- Crinoline
- Doily
- Gusset
- Harmonica
- I
- Macaron
- Meta
- That sound coffee makes
- Twee
- Walter
More celebrity baby names
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The best and worst celebrity baby names of 2014
Liv Tyler welcomes a son: See his cute preppy baby names