Literary Names

Names invented or popularised by a book or play. Several of the most ordinary-looking names in English use were coined by a single author and have been in circulation ever since.

Rankings for

80 names, most popular first in United States

Very Rare Rare Uncommon

Girls Boys Unisex

Darcy Darcy is a name of Norman French origin meaning "from Arcy," a place in Normandy.
Unisex French #858 in US
Orlando Orlando is Roland with its consonants swapped — Italian moved the r, and the hero of the Song of Roland became the hero of Orlando Furioso, the same man under a rearranged name.
Boy Italian #873 in US
Byron Byron means at the cattle sheds — a working place name that became shorthand for romantic poetry, which is a longer journey than most names make.
Boy English #983 in US
Salomé Salomé is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "peace," and the woman the name is best known for is never actually named in the gospels.
Girl French #1,042 in US
Cedric Cedric was invented by Walter Scott in Ivanhoe in 1819, and it appears to be a misspelling — he took the Anglo-Saxon Cerdic and transposed the letters.
Boy English #1,053 in US
Clarissa Clarissa means bright, and it names one of the longest novels in English — Richardson's Clarissa runs to about a million words, which makes it longer than the whole of Proust in most editions.
Girl Latin #1,116 in US
Imogen Imogen is a girl's name that exists because of a printing error.
Girl Irish #1,118 in US
Roxanne Roxanne means dawn or bright, and it is Persian rather than Greek — Alexander married Roxana in Bactria, and she and their son were murdered after his death.
Girl Persian #1,313 in US
Wendy Wendy is usually credited to J.
Girl English #1,345 in US
Brenda Brenda is a girl's name from an Old Norse word for a sword or a torch, and it appears to have been invented for a novel — Walter Scott used it in The Pirate in 1822, and no earlier use is recorded.
Girl Norse #1,528 in US
Lucinda Lucinda was invented by Cervantes — the name appears in Don Quixote in 1605 and has no record before it, which makes it one of the few names on this site with a datable author.
Girl Spanish #1,747 in US
Tess Tess is a girl's name of Greek origin, a short form of Theresa whose meaning has never been established despite centuries of attempts.
Girl English #1,783 in US
Belinda Belinda is a literary invention with a snake in it — the Germanic element behind it is usually read as a serpent, and Pope's Rape of the Lock made the name fashionable in 1712.
Girl English #1,826 in US
Melinda Melinda is an invented name rather than an inherited one — an eighteenth-century literary coinage joining the Greek word for honey to the ending of Belinda and Lucinda.
Girl English #1,984 in US
Pamela Pamela is a girl's name invented by a poet: Sir Philip Sidney coined it for his Arcadia around 1580, apparently from Greek elements meaning all sweetness.
Girl English #2,248 in US
Geraldine Geraldine was invented in a 1537 love poem — the Earl of Surrey coined it for Lady Elizabeth FitzGerald, calling her the Fair Geraldine.
Girl Germanic #2,438 in US
Janice Janice is a girl's name usually credited to a 1899 novel, though our records carry it from 1894 — five years before the book.
Girl English #2,520 in US
Olivier Olivier is a boy's name usually taken as olive tree, though the character who made it famous — Roland's companion in the Song of Roland — may carry a Norse name meaning elf army instead.
Boy French #2,539 in US
Lynette Lynette entered English through Tennyson, who reshaped a Welsh name for the Idylls of the King — Luned became Lynette, and the spelling he used is the one that survived.
Girl Welsh #2,608 in US
Selma Selma may have been invented by a forger — the name appears in Macpherson's Ossian poems of the 1760s, which he presented as ancient Gaelic epic and largely wrote himself.
Girl German #2,810 in US
Coralie Coralie names a skeleton — coral is the calcium structure built by colonies of tiny animals, so the name describes an object made by living things rather than a plant or a stone.
Girl French #2,986 in US
Darcie Darcie is a girl's name of Norman French origin meaning "from Arcy."
Girl French #3,563 in US
Aisling Aisling is a girl's name of Irish origin meaning "dream" or "vision," and it names a whole genre of Irish political poetry.
Girl Irish #3,783 in US
Gretchen Gretchen means little pearl, and German uses her name for a kind of question — a Gretchenfrage is the awkward essential one you cannot dodge, after the question she puts to Faust about religion.
Girl German #4,322 in US
Thelma Thelma is a girl's name invented for a novel in 1887, and the Greek word it was probably built from means "will" or "volition."
Girl English #4,695 in US
Viviane Viviane means alive, and in Arthurian romance she is the Lady of the Lake — the figure who gives Arthur his sword and then seals Merlin in a tree or a rock, depending on which version you read.
Girl French #5,534 in US
Héloïse Héloïse is a girl's name of Germanic origin meaning "healthy" and "wide," carried by the twelfth-century scholar whose letters to Abelard are among the most famous correspondence in Europe.
Girl French #6,369 in US
Mireille Mireille was invented by a poet.
Girl French #8,713 in US
Arsène Arsène is a boy's name of Greek origin meaning "male" or "virile," and in France it belongs above all to a fictional gentleman thief.
Boy French #9,448 in US
Manon Manon is a girl's name of Hebrew origin, a French diminutive of Marie whose meaning has never been settled.
Girl French #9,953 in US
Roxane Roxane is a girl's name of Persian origin meaning "bright" or "dawn," borne by the Bactrian noblewoman who married Alexander the Great.
Girl French #13,935 in US
Claudine Claudine is a French girl's name meaning lame, from a Roman family name.
Girl French 170,774 births

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A style is our reading of a name. A decade is the register — the names children were actually given, in order, with the counts.

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