Baby Name: Condoleezza

Looking for baby names with musical associations?

Here are a few ideas (plus links to each name’s popularity graph):

• Adagio, a musical term meaning “at ease” in Italian
• Aria, a solo sung (with orchestral accompaniment) in an opera

• Bell, a percussive instrument
• Brio, a musical term meaning “vivacity” in Italian

• Cadence, the final chords in a musical phrase
• Calypso, a type of Caribbean music
• Calliope, a keyboard instrument
  • The mother of bandleader Harry James played a circus calliope.
• Carol, a type of festive song
• Celesta, a keyboard instrument
• Chanson, a lyric-driven French song
• Chord, a harmonic set of three or more notes
• Clarion, a medieval brass instrument
• Coda, the concluding section of a piece of music

• Dolce, a musical term meaning “sweet” in Italian
• Dorian, a type of musical scale

• Harmony, the sound of two or more notes being played simultaneously
• Harper, a surname that originally referred to someone who played the harp

• Jazz, a genre of music

• Key, the scale around which a piece of music is built

• Lydian, a type of musical scale
• Lyric (often used in the plural), the words of a song

• Mandolin, a stringed instrument
• Medley, a single piece of music created from existing songs
• Melody, the sequence of notes in a musical phrase
• Music, an art form in which patterns of sounds are created as a means of emotional expression

• Octave, the interval between one pitch and another with double/half its frequency

• Piper, a surname that originally referred to someone who played a pipe

• Reed, the vibrating piece of a woodwind instrument
• Rhythm, the variation of strong and weak elements of sounds over time

• Sonata, a piece of music played by instruments
  • Composer Bear McCreary welcomed a baby girl named Sonatine in 2014.
• Song, a piece of music performed by a single voice
• Staccato, a musical term meaning “disconnected” in Italian
• Symphony, music written for an orchestra

• Tango, a type of music (and dance)
• Timbre (pronounced TAM-ber), the perceived sound of a musical note

• Verse, a portion of a song
• Viola, a stringed instrument

Other musical terms I’ve seen used as baby names include Allegro (“cheerful”), Largo (“broad”), Lento (“slow”), Condoleezza (based on con dolcezza, “with sweetness”), and Blues (the middle name of Justin Bieber’s son, born in 2024).

Sources: Wiktionary, Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica

Image: Adapted from Clarinet Concerto No.1, Op.26 (public domain)

[Latest update: Jul. 2025]