Octomom aside, most of us only have the opportunity to name a small number of children. Authors, on the other hand, can name family after family–including the parents. Some–like Jane Austen–were limited by the restricted supply of names available in their milieu, while others could let their imaginations soar.

I thought it might be fun (and instructive?) to look at some of the more prominent brother and sister sets in literature for possible ideas–though you could probably skip Wallstreet Panic.

SISTERS

Alcott, Little Woman

JOSEPHINE, MEG, BETH, AMY

Austen, Pride and Prejudice

JANE, ELIZABETH, MARY, CATHARINE (KITTY), LYDIA

Austen, Sense and Sensibility

ELINOR, MARIANNE, MARGARET

Chekhov, Three Sisters

OLGA, MASHA, IRINA

Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

CHARITY, MERCY (known as Cherry and Merry)

Eliot, Middlemarch

CELIA, DOROTHEA

Lawrence, The Rainbow, Women in Love

URSULA, GUDRUN

Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

SCARLETT (Katie Scarlett), SUELLEN (Susan Elinor), CARREEN (Caroline Irene)

Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

STELLA, BLANCHE

Woody Allen, Hannah & Her Sisters

LEE, HANNAH, HOLLY

BROTHERS

Cheever, The Wapshot Chronicle

MOSES, COVERLY

Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

DMITRI (MITYA), IVAN, ALYOSHA

Dumas, The Corsican Brothers

LUCIEN, LOUIS

Faulkner, several novels

BILBO, VARDAMAN, CLARENCE, ST. ELMO, MONTGOMERY WARD

WALLSTREET PANIC, ADMIRAL DEWEY

VIRGIL, BYRON

Miller, Death of a Salesman

BIFF, HAPPY

O’Neill, Desire Under the Elms

EBEN, PETER, SIMEON

Shepard, Fool for Love

LEE, AUSTIN

Steinbeck, East of Eden

CALEB, ARON

MIXTURES

Barrie, Peter Pan

WENDY (invented), MICHAEL, JOHN

Dickens, A Christmas Carol

MARTHA, BELINDA, PETER, TIM

Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

CASH, DARL, JEWEL, DEWEY DELL, VARDAMAN

BENJAMIN, JASON, QUENTIN, CANDACE (Caddy)

Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga

JOLYON (Jolly), IRENESOAMES, WINIFRED

Hardy, The Return of the Native

CLEMENT (Clym), THOMASIN

Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

CLIFFORD, HEPZIBAH

James, The Turn of the Screw

FLORA, MILES

Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

JEREMY (Jem), JEAN LOUISE (Scout)

Salinger, Franny and Zooey and short stories

FRANNY (Frances), ZOOEY (Zachary), BUDDY (Webb), SEYMOUR, BEATRICE (Boo-Boo), WALTER, WAKER

Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

HOLDEN, PHOEBE, VIOLA, (Allie Vincent –siblings mentioned in other stories)

Shaw, Man and Superman

OCTAVIUS, VIOLET

Sidney, Five Little Peppers

BEN (Ebenezer), POLLY (Mary), JOEL, DAVID, PHRONSIE (Sophronia)

Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

TOM, ROSE OF SHARON, AL, NOAH, RUTHIE, WINFIELD

Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

SEBASTIAN, JULIA, CORDELIA

 Some authors have a genuine knack for character naming, usually spread over their entire oeuvre. In the case of Margaret Mitchell, it was all focused on her only novel–Gone With the Wind–whose character names still resonate today. The 1933 book (almost titled Tomorrow is Another Day) was an unprecedented smash, selling 30 million copies and winning a Pulitzer Prize, as was the movie, released in 1939 and receiving a then-record ten Oscars. Its frequent revivals and TV screenings have kept it alive for later generations.  So how have its characters’ names fared for babies over the years?

MAIN CHARACTERS

SCARLETT O’Hara. For four years following the debut of the film, Scarlett sneaked onto the bottom edge of the Social Security list. It took a glamorous young, modern movie star–Ms. Johansson–to propel it to the upper echelons. A stylish color name, it’s now in the Top 300 and sure to move higher.

RHETT Butler. So closely connected to the Clark Gable persona, it took Rhett a long time to make it into the mainstream, which it finally started to do in the fifties, along with similar names like Brett and Brent, all of which have pretty much faded.

ASHLEY Wilkes. At the time of the book’s writing, Ashley was very much a Southern gentleman’s name. It wasn’t until the early 1980’s that it really crossed the genderline, when it started to appear as female characters on soap operas like The Young and the Restless. Margaret Mitchell would have been shocked to see it beome the #1 girls’ name in America in 1991.

MELANIE Hamilton Wilkes. The name of this sweet and noble character inspired a generation of Melanies. It jumped onto the list in 1938, no doubt because of the novel’s colossal success, and remains viable today.

INDIA Wilkes. The name of Ashley’s sister is one of the most distinctive in the book and movie. Heard to some extent during the Civil War period of the story, it dropped off the charts, coming back with the resurgence of place names in the 1980s and is still an exotically appealing choice.

BEAU Wilkes. The name of Ashley and Melanie’s young son was another strictly Southern name, hardly heard in the rest of the country despite its handsome image. It’s been picking up some steam in the last few years, chosen by several celeb parents.

BELLE Watling. Another name with an attractive meaning, it was for a long time associated with slightly wanton women like this one and Mae West-type seductresses, but now with the growing popularity of Bella, it has been making a comeback, especially as a middle name.

BONNIE BLUE Butler. Although this wasn’t her given name, everyone thought of it as that of Scarlett and Rhett’s little daughter, and Bonnie–yet another GWTW name that means pretty–had a long run on the pop charts, reaching #32 in 1942, and still hanging on in the Top 1000.

EUGENIA Victoria Butler. The actual full given name of Bonnie Blue, Eugenia is an elegant Victorian name ripe for revival.

OTHERS

ARCHIE. A minor character with the kind of nickname name popular in the UK and beginning to catch on here, chosen by Amy Poehler and Will Arnett.

CARREEN and SUELLEN O’Hara, Scarlett’s sisters; Suellen began to be used the year after the film’s release, and came back split in two–as Sue Ellen on the popular nighttime soap, Dallas. Carreen, with all its double letters, never caught fire.

ELLA Lorena Kennedy. In the novel, the fashionably named Ella was Scarlett’s first daughter. She doesn’t appear in the movie, and neither does her son, WADE Hampton Hamilton.

EULALIE and PAULINE, Scarlett’s maternal aunts; Eulalie is a rich and rhythmic possiblity.

And finally there is TARA, the name of the O’Hara ancestral plantation, which went on to become a fairly popular name choice–60 years after the movie.

You’ve probably noticed that Aiden is now way more popular than the original Irish Aidan.  And also that Zoey is catching up with Zoe, while other names like Isiah, Kaleb, Camryn and Sienna are either ahead of or breathing down the necks of their conventionally spelled cousins.  Sometimes the reasons for these changes are clear-cut, sometimes it’s just something in the ether.

Not that this is a new thing.  I remember the first time that someone asked me to spell my first name.  “Huh?”  “Well, is it Linda with an ‘i’ or Lynda with a ‘y’?  Without my really noticing, Lynda had become a spelling alternative in the wake of  the popularity of Lynn.  Something similar has happened with Aidan/Aiden.  When the epidemic of rhyming ‘en’-ending names erupted–Jaden, Braden, Caden et al–it was a logical development to make Aiden a legitimate member of that family.  And when ‘K’-beginning boys’ names became a rage, Kaleb began pursuing Caleb up the list.

The case of Zoe/Zooey is a little different, as the spike of the latter version can be pretty much traced to a single phenomenon–’Zoey101′–the Emmy-nominated teen sitcom starring (now teen mom) Jamie Lynn Spears, which appeared on Nickelodeon in 2005.  And the publicity surrounding Jamie Lynn’s big sister Britney’s second son helped spread that spelling of Brayden.  The rise of the British actress Sienna Miller spurred the spelling change of the Italian town of Siena, actress Jorja Fox legitimized the phonetic spelling of Georgia, and Gossip Girl hottie Chace (originally his middle name) Crawford has the spelling of his name chasing Chase.

In terms of image, rather than spelling, Scarlett Johansson challenged the long-term connection of her name to Gone With the Wind spitfire Scarlett O’Hara, just as the charms of Jude Law have managed to erase the age-old associations of his name to Judas.

More recently we’ve seen a couple of starbabies who might have some influence on the future spellings of names: Brooke Shield’s Grier (rather than Greer) and Angie Harmon’s Emery (rather than Emory).

Can you think of any others?