Unusual names I've run across

[Jennifer]

Sequester (I guess no different than Sylvester, but it means isolated)

Capisce (really.. a kid from my daughter's school!)

[ckevans]

Sequester is the sort of word that sounds like a name to someone who hears it for the first time. Capisce is certainly a bit odd as a name, though.

I haven't had time to fully analyze the complete data I got from Nebraska for 2007 yet, but there were boys named Archangel, Chili, Coal, Creole, Exodus, Frost, Knahledge, Righteous, Titan, Tuffy, and Tug.

Of course the problem with interpreting some of this is that one doesn't know why the parents chose them just seeing them on a list. I've learned over the years that some of the names which seem the oddest turn out to be understandable when one knows the real motives of the namers -- or when one discovers that what looks like an odd English word is really a perfectly acceptable name in another language. For several years I used Bilge as an example of an "unbelievable true" name until I found out it's not a use of the English word for dirty water in a boat, but a Turkish name pronounced "BEEL-eh". ("g" is silent in many Turkish words.)