Hockey Boy Names!

      From my first guest post on hockey names on the Canadian world junior’s team, I’ve been wanting to do another hockey themed post. This week, faced with around 10hrs on a train, I decided to go through the roster of every team in the NHL to pick out some of my favorites and some unique names. The NHL is a goldmine of boy names with everything from trendy, to classic and a large dose of the international and because of this, there were so many names to choose from. This means that this post is going to be a pretty long one! I decided to break this post down into names I love, international names and unique names. Throughout the post, popularity will be from the country the player comes from only.

My Favorites

The Player: Colton Orr

The Team: Toronto Maple Leafs

The Name: Colton is an Engish surname derived from a place name.

Name Rank: 82 (Canada)

The Player: Gabriel Landeskog

The Team: Colorado Avalanche

The Name: Gabriel comes from a Hebrew name meaning “strong man of god”.

Name Rank: 47 (Sweden)

The Player: Mason Raymond

The Team: Vancouver Canucks

The Name: Mason is an English occupation surname meaning “stoneworker”.

Name Rank: 7 (Canada)

The Player: Roman Polák

The Team: St. Louis Blues

The Name: Roman is a Late Latin place name.

Name Rank: I could not find past the top 5 for the Czech Republic.

The Player: Tanner Glass

The Team: Pittsburgh Penguins

The Name: Tanner is an English occupation surname name meaning “one who tans hides”.

Name Rank: n/a (Canada)

International Names

The Player: Anže Kopitar

The Team: LA Kings

The Name: Anže (On-zhay) is a Slovenian version of the name John, meaning “god is gracious”.

Name Rank: 13 (Slovenia)

The Player: Evgeni Malkin

The Team: Pittsburgh Penguins

The Name: Evgeni (Ehv-gen-ee) is a Russian form the name Eugene meaning “well born”.

Name Rank: I could not find past the top 10 for Russia, but would assume Evgeni is relatively popular as I can think of another hockey player and a figure skater of the same name.

The Player: Jiří Tlustý

The Team: Carolina Hurricanes

The Name: Jiří (Yurr-ee) is the Czech form of the name George, meaning “farmer”.

Name Rank: not in the top 10 (Czech Republic)

The Player: Korbinian Holzer

The Team: Toronto Maple Leafs

The Name: Korbinian is a German name derived from the Latin word for raven.

Name Rank: could not find past the German top 25

The Player: Zdeno Chara

The Team: Boston Bruins

The Name: Zdeno is a Slavic name meaning “build/create”.

Name Rank: not in the top 10 (Czech Republic)

Unusual Names

The Player: Guillaume Latendresse

The Team: Ottawa Senators

The Name: Guillaume (Gee-ohm) is the French form of William, which comes from elements meaning desire and protect.

Name Rank: 77 (Quebec, Canada)

The Player: Milan Lucic

The Team: Boston Bruins

The Name: Milan comes from Slavic roots meaning gracious.

Name Rank: n/a (BC, Canada)

The Player: Nazem Kadri

The Team: Toronto Maple Leafs

The Name: I cannot find Nazem on a website, however, it is possible it’s related to the female Arabic name Nasim which means “breeze”.

Name Rank: n/a (Ontario, Canada)

The Player: Pascal Dupuis

The Team: Pittsburgh Penguins

The Name: Pascal is derived from the Latin word for something “having to do with Easter”.

Name Rank: n/a (Quebec, Canada)

The Player: Zenon Konopka

The Team: Minnesota Wild

The Name: Polish derivation of the name of the Greek god Zeus.

Name Rank: n/a (Ontario, Canada)

Does anyone else look to athletes for interesting names? If so, what are some of your favorite names from your favorite sports?