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I think Rivers makes sense for a boy because it's a surname, not just a plural word. It makes me think of the Rivers family in Jane Eyre.
I like River more for a girl. On a boy I'd prefer it as a middle name.

Well, I don't think it's cheesy or Hollywoodified. Or bland or played out. River for a girl is a little Hollywoody IMO, but for a boy it's sort of like Rowan or Sage. I mean, I guess maybe a little bit 'bland or played out' but not really any more so than Jack or Henry or Oliver is.

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Sorry I don't like Rivers at all though. Brooks is very similar but not as bad.

I LOVE the name River! I would consider it if we ever had another DS. It’s such a handsome name.

Omg what if he wants to be named Rivers! That would be so unprecedented for you. I love it. It's your secret taste coming out.

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I know a dude named Rivers. It works perfectly well. I sort of like it more than River. I think River is actually kind of bland and boring. The "s" grounds it.

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I do think it's pretentious if it's not a family name, but I also kinda like it. Of course I also know a guy named Tarantulas in sort of the same friend group and people just call him Tarantulas, so what do I know. Rivers is a prettier concept than Tarantulas. The concept of multiple rivers is kind of Buddhist because it makes you think of the unity of the source. Whereas Tarantulas just makes you think of multiple tarantulas.

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(The story is that his parents were like Z-list rockers, and named their three kids in increasing order of weirdness, for attention. The first one was like Katie or something, and the second one was weird on the level of maybe Creed.)

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I think if you actually love Rivers, you would be doing a disservice by using River.

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edit: The reason I went off about Tarantulas is that one of the weirdest things I see in naming is the trend of taking a noun and adding an -s to it to form a name. like Chambers and Parks, two real people I actually know, named after multiple chambers, and multiple parks. And multiple tarantuals. More-than-one-river feels like an exception and I was digging into why I felt that way.

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edit 2: Interesting to see people backing up that River is bland and Rivers is not.

This message was edited 4/10/2020, 3:49 PM

I like the name River, but the name Rivers just makes me think of Joan Rivers.

It's so popular right now that I just can't enjoy it anymore.

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River is cute, but yeah i'm over it.

It’s not really my style, but I don’t hate it.

River is one of my favorites. I think it looks and sounds handsome, and it reminds me of Rowan which I also really like.

I guess it’s a GP for me as it’s not my usual style, but I really like it.

River is an extremely bland hippie name, in my opinion. Rivers, on the other hand, is much more original and a perfectly good name for a boy. I don’t think it’s pretentious at all.

It's not my usual style, but I like it a lot. I don't think it's too River Phoenix.

I think I prefer Rivers, honestly. I tend to like surnames-as-first-names, even though they can be pretentious. Rivers doesn't sound particularly pretentious as far as surnames goes. There's something more down-to-earth about it. River is kind of played-out Hollywood to me. There's just nothing interesting about it.

It's kind of bland, to me. I can't attach a personality, to it.

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It would make a cool middle name, though.

sorry dont like it at all

Yeah, it's cheesy, and played out, and Hollywood. And it just doesn't sound like a name. I can't imagine calling out "River!" without sounding like somebody hollering "timber" as they cut a tree down. It just sounds silly, like a flood warning.
Also, do you mind me asking: does the baby's last name have an er ending? I ask because I've recently seen a couple people with er endings to their first and last names. Say Taylor Parker and Heather Keller. I mean, River Waters is obviously a really bad idea, but River Hunter or Rivers Connors would also sound silly. I call that style of combo Foghorn Leghorn names.

I'd far prefer Rivers! Which is weird for me, but River seems cliched and, dare I say, shallow and Rivers, perhaps because it's a ln, has more stature.

I have only recently started to like River. I think it is one of the more serious nature names and I love the V in the middle. It is very on trend with the sounds that are popular right now, but I think it may be nearing its peak and it is genuinely unisex which is cool.

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I don't mind the -s though Rivers might occasionally slip out as Reverse from me, because talking is hard... I'm not sure how common that would be.

I prefer Rivers. River may be cheesy and Hollywoodified, but Rivers sounds like a surname, thus not cheesy and Hollywoodified.

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As for "pretentious" you know how I feel about that so we won't go there. I'll just say don't worry about it.