Sage

Sage is a name that I find myself very attracted to. It has the interest of not one but two meanings, and sounds very similar to Paige, which has been a long time favourite of mine.

Sage has the beautiful latin meaning of "wise, healthy", and who doesn't hope thier child will grow up to be both! It also has a nature meaning, as in the aromatic herb sage.

This is a name that can be used for both boys and girls and in America is in the bottom half of the top 1000 names for both boys and girls, which in my opinion is a good thing as it is one of those names that's not too weird as everyone has heard of it and could spell it, but it's fairly unlikely you'll bump into very many of them :-) Although much more coomon on girls, it could be argued that it is better as a boys name due to it's associations with the archetypical wise old man. However I've always loved it more as a girl's name, and don't think I could ever use it as a boys name myself.

Variations can be spelt Sayge or Saige. I kind of like Saige, especially as this brings it closer to Paige. However interestingly enough, I saw an article of few months ago that Saige was actually one of the least popular names used in my state (Victoria, Australia) in 2011! Apparently only 3 new babies were given this name. Which in a way makes it slightly more appealing to me. The main disadvantage would probably be that everyone would spell it the "usual" way, so those future Saige's will likely have to spell it for people every time. But that's possibly a small price to pay for having a lovely name :-)