Unique & Exotic Names for Boys & Girls

Some people want to choose memorable names for their boys and girls. This site offers a guide of new, ancient, historical, mystical and magical original names for babies, including famous names and Sioux names.
Best Exotic Baby Names

Beatrix Potter and her Magical World

Helen Beatrix Potter (28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) was an English writer and illustrator. She is famous for writing children's books with animal characters such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Potter's family was quite rich. She was educated by governesses. She did not have many friends, but she had many pets, including Benjamin and Peter, two rabbits. She spent her holidays in Scotland and the Lake District. There, she began to learn to love nature, plants, and animals, which she carefully painted.
When she was around 30, Potter published The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It was very popular. She also became engaged to her publisher Norman Warne. Her parents became angry and separated with her because of this. They did not like her to marry someone who was socially lower than her. However, Warne died before he and Potter could marry.
Potter began writing and illustrating children's books full time. She did not have to ask her parents for money anymore because she had money from her books. In time, she bought Hill Top Farm and more land. In her forties, she married William Heelis, a local solicitor. She also began raising sheep and became a farmer, though she continued writing. She published 23 books.
Potter died on 22 December 1943. Almost all of her money was left to the National Trust. Her books continue to sell well around the world, in many different languages. Her stories have been retold in various formats including a ballet, films, and in animation. In 1936, Walt Disney wanted to make a film about Peter Rabbit, but Potter refused. In 2006, Miss Potter, a biographical film starring Renée Zellweger was released.

Did you know?

The World of Beatrix Potter Attraction is situated in the centre of Bowness-on-Windermere, in the heart of the English Lake District A visit to the World of Beatrix Potter Attraction takes you on a journey through the life and work of Beatrix Potter. The Attraction is in six parts and it takes around 45 minutes to one hour to explore them all. Here is the link:
The World of Beatrix Potter Attraction

August: Children's Month in Argentina

In Argentina the whole month of August is devoted to honour children although Children's Day is actually celebrated just on the second Sunday of the same month. On Children's Day, children are typically congratulated and receive presents from their parents. Free shows are given in parks and shopping centres, some of them including raffles with interesting prizes. Museums also organize interactive activities for children and their families. Children stores (selling children's clothing), toy shops and bookshops offer important discounts and allowances on products for children. Some famous hotels even offer a spa day for children for them to have a relaxing and funny experience.
Restaurants prepare special Kid Menus (such as "milanesas" served with fried or mashed potatoes). Soft drinks are, of course, also included in those menus. For teatime, tearooms offer a glass of chocolate milk and vanilla biscuits. Typical confectionery items also given to children include sweets, lollipops, candy bars, chocolate, candy floss, toffee apples and other sweet items of snack food.
Some charity organizations collect toys and food for children who are either in need or sick in hospital, in this way enabling all the infants in the country to enjoy Children's Day as well.

English-Spanish Glossary: Toys for Babies & Children

Babies' Toys

blocks: cubos apilables
educational toys: juguetes educativos
inflatable toy: juguete inflable
mobile: móvil para bebé
rattle: sonajero
rubber duck: patito de goma
stuffed animal (also plushie): animalito de peluche
teddy bear: osito de peluche

Children's Toys

bow and arrow: arco y flecha
bucket and spade: balde y palita de playa
collectible: juguete de colección
chemistry set: juego de química
chess set: juego de ajedrez
construction set / Lego bricks: juguete para armar
doll: muñeca/muñeco
doll's house: casa de muñecas
hobby horse: caballito de juguete
jenga: jenga
jigsaw puzzle: rompecabezas
kendama: balero
marbles: bolitas
Play-Doh: masa para modelar
rocking horse: mecedora con forma de caballito
spinning top: trompo
toy box / toy chest: juguetero
toy soldier: soldado de juguete
train model: tren para armar
yo- yo: yo-yo
Wendy house (also cubby house or play house): casita de juguete desarmable

The Cubic Toy: Rubik's Cube

Rubik's Cube (or Rubik Cube) is a type of toy consisting of a cube with nine smaller coloured cubes on each side. The small cubes must be turned so that each side of the toy shows one colour only. Solving a Rubik's Cube requires logic and thinking. Rubik's Cube was a very popular toy in the 1970s.
The Rubik's cube was invented by Hungarian sculptor and architect Ernő Rubik in 1974. In 1975 a Hungarian toy-maker started to make it in large numbers but it was originally called the "Magic Cube". In 1977 it got sold to Ideal Toys Corporation who renamed it Rubik’s cube. The Spanish for Rubik's Cube is cubo mágico.

Children's Uncommon Diseases: Reye's Syndrome

Reye's Syndrome is a rare and dangerous disease that usually affects children, and often after they have taken aspirin to treat an illenss. For this reason, doctors now suggest that children under twelve years old should not be given aspirin. Reye's syndrome is a disorder that affects the liver and the brain and that can cause death. Cases of Reye’s syndrome in adults are rare. The syndrome is named after Dr. R. Douglas Reye, who published the first study of the syndrome in 1963 in the medical journal The Lancet.

* Tylenol

In 1955, Robert McNeil introduced Tylenol for children. This was important because it was assumed that aspirin caused Reye's syndrome. Later, more Tylenol products were developed such as Tylenol PM, Infant's Tylenol, and Tylenol Allergy Sinus. In 1959, McNeil Laboratories was placed at the top of the pharmaceutical industry. The active ingredient in Tylenol is acetaminophen, used for headaches, fever, muscle and body pain, arthritis, and joint pain. Tylenol was popular back then and still is today.

Vocabulary: All About Kids

Kid is an informal word which means a child.
I’m taking the kids (= my children) to the zoo this afternoon.
Kid also refers to a young person.
college kids
Those soldiers are just kids.
In American English, kid also means younger (of a brother or sister).
his kid sister
Kiddie is an informal word to refer to a small child:
I carry my little boy in a kiddie seat on the back of my bike.
Kiddo (especially in American spoken English) is a way of addressing someone you know, usually a young person:
Come on kiddo, let’s go.
Kid’s stuff (in American English) means something that is suitbale only for children, because it is too simple, unsophisticated or boring.
The exam as kid’s stuff compared to the one we had last year.

Vocabulary: All About Children

A very young child under the age of about 18 months is a baby or (more formally) an infant. A child who has just learnt to walk is a toddler. Toilet-trained or potty-trained child is a young child who controls the bowel and bladder and uses the bathroom for elimination.

The terrible twos is the condition of being a small child, around two years old, whose behaviour is often rather difficult. A tantrum is a sudden attack of childish bad temper or anger.

In Britain, the term rising fives refers to children who will soon be five years old, the age by which they must start school. Sometimes infant schools take children when they are rising fives.

A child up to the age of 9 or 10 is sometimes called a little girl or a little boy, especially by adults, and girl or boy can be used about anyone up to the age of about 20. However, someone aged betweeen 13 and 19 may prefer to be called a teenager or a young woman or a young man. Teenagers are sometimes called young adults, especially where their health or social behaviour is being formally discussed. A younger teenager may also be formally called an adolescent, but this word often shows disapproval. A youth is an older, usually male, teenager but this word, too, usually indicates disapproval:

The police arrested several youths who were fighting.

A teeny bopper is a young person between the ages of about 9 and 14, especially a girl, who is very interested in popular music and the bands who play it, the latest fashions, etc. To talk generally about anyone between the ages of 10 and 25, people would usually say simply young people (or more formally) the young. Kid (infml) is used both for children:

Let's take the kids to the park

and especially (in American English) for young people:

We met a group of college kids.

An only child has no brothers or sisters. Child prodigy is an infant with exceptional talents or powers. A tomboy is a spirited young girl who enjoys rough and noisy activities. A ragamuffin is a dirty young child in torn clothes.

Children should be seen and not heard: a phrase used especially in Victorian times to tell children to be quiet and not talk. The phrase is now used to talk about this old-fashioned idea of how children should behave.

Never work with children or animals: a phrase often said by people who work in the world of acting, as children and animals are believed to be difficult to work with, and also to get all the attention and praise because they are very sweet.

Children's Toys: Teddy Bears

Teddy Bear



a toy bear filled with soft material, which is a very common British and American child's toy.



Teddy Bears' Picnic



a children's song which was first popular in the 1950s and which starts:

If you go out in the woods today

You're sure of a big surprise.

If you go out in the woods today

You'd better go in disguise.



Teddy Picker



A 'teddy picker' is Northern slang for a crane machine: a popular machine at carnivals where prizes, particularly stuffed animals, are picked by a mechanical crane.



Where does the term Teddy Bear come from?



Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) was a US politician in the Republican Party who was the 26th president of the US from 1901 to 1909. He was a popular president and is remembered for having a large moustache for saying things were "bully" when he liked them. Roosevelt described his foreign policy using the phrase "speack softly and carry a big stick". He was informally called Teddy and the Teddy Bear is named after him.

Children's Toys: Dolls

Sindy Doll

A popular type of doll in the shape of an attractive young woman, sold as a child's toy in the UK. There is also a large variety of clothes, furniture, etc which is designed for Sindy.

Barbie

A popular type of doll which epitomizes a beautiful young woman. There is a male doll called Ken, who is Barbie's boyfriend, and there are fashionable clothes, cars, furniture and accessories for Barbie and Ken.

Cabbage Patch Kids

A type of doll that looks like a small fat child. All Cabbage Patch Dolls are slightly different from one another.

Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy

A type of rag doll (= a soft doll made out of cloth which is very floppy) very popular in the US. She has a large round face, red circles on her cheeks and hair made from pieces of red wool. The male doll that looks like this is her brother, Raggedy Andy.

Tar Baby

The term tar baby refers to something which sticks to or weighs down a person and is very difficult to remove. It comes from the doll covered in tar in one of the stories about Brer Rabbit by J. C. Harris.

Audacious Colours & Patterns for Kids

Gone are the days when children wore pale and delicate pastels. Manufacturers of clothes for kids nowadays incorporate a palette of unusual colours that children would have never worn years ago.
Traditionally baby boys were dressed in blue and baby girls in pink. Though colours for today’s babies are still soft, most of them have acquired more intense shades: lavender, tea green, mauve, sapphire blue and cream are some examples. Both babies and children now dare to wear unconventional hues that would have been unsuitable for them in the past: warm oranges (like carrot, tangerine and peach), citrusy yellows, bold shades of pink (salmon, cherry, fuchsia, bubblegum), crimson, electric blue, turquoise, green and all its variants (lime, grass, mossy, pistaccio), extreme browns (like coffee and mustard) and even neon and fluorescent colours. Dark tones like plum, aubergine purple, smoke grey and -scary as it may seem- black are the “in-thing” for kids.
Patterns have also changed. In the past, designers of kids’ clothes featured all kinds of animals: zoo species, jungle inhabitants and kindergarten types such as candid elephants, frogs in love, friendly butterflies, bees buzzing round honey pots and the forever classical teddy bears. Clothes for girls generally gave prominence to romantic designs (hearts, flowers), balloons, fairy-tale princesses and castles. Though these motifs were chiefly used in by-gone days, they are still part and parcel of the ones which are stamped on children’s clothes. However, a significant change has taken place: the patterns on contemporary clothes for kids have now acquired a more adult-like approach. Designs formerly reserved for adults -such as mili camo, skulls, spooky castles, roller skates, surfers, urban landscapes, retro milkshades, pirate flags, electric guitars, rock and roll mottoes, Harley Davidson motorcycles, hip hop and punk transfers, computer mice, ecological and good-will messages and even audacious legends in Coca-Cola letters- have been boldy incorporated resulting in wild mixtures, sometimes sophisticated, sometimes amusing...
Traditional patterns (tartans, stripes, polka dots) used to be combined with plain colours; now this matching rule is no longer respected; anarchy reigns: it seems “anything can match anything”. Fabrics that would have never been used for kids before are also becoming trendy: leather, organic cotton, nylon, corduroy, combed cotton and even fishnet and tulle.
Times are a-changing... and so are clothes for the little ones!