While browsing through a recent issue of The New Yorker magazine, I came across an article about the current generation of picture books and their bratty protagonists.  It was illustrated by an image from a book called Finn Throws a Fit.  Aha, I thought, so juvenile authors are on top of current naming trends.  This impelled me to go running (figuratively) to my local Borders to seek further evidence.

One difference I noticed immediately was that there were more little human protagonists and fewer of the porcine (excluding Olivia), feline, canine, bovine, etc persuasion than there were in the past, and there were, as the article pointed out, a lot more angry children populating the pages, and a lot more preoccupation with poop and farts.

 In terms of names, I was surprised to see that there was a book title containing almost every currently popular choice—almost as many as there are on the personalized pencils in the airport—a big upswing from the past.  Here are some titles all released since the turn of the century–and they’re just the tip of the iceberg!:

Girls

AVA and the Magic Tutu

CHLOE’S Snowy Day

CLEMENTINE

CONSTANCE and the Great Escape

ELIZA and the Dragonfly

HARRIET, You’ll Drive Me Wild

ISABEL’S Car Wash

My Name is Not ISABELLA

IVY and Bean

JUNIE B., First Grader

The Adventures of LAILA and MAYA

LILLY’s Big Day

Let’s Find LUCY

MAISY series

MERCY Watson series

Fancy NANCY series

OLIVIA

RUBY’S FALLING LEAVES

Silly SOPHIA

When SOPHIE Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry

TALLULAH in the Kitchen

I, TRIXIE

Goodnight, my sweet VIOLET

WILLA and the Wind, WILLA the Wonderful

WILLOW

ZOE’s Tale, ZOE’s Hats, ZOE and CHLOE on the Prowl

BOYS

AIDAN’S First Full Moon Circle

BARNABY Bear

BRAYDEN, BRAYDEN, Who Do You See?

COOPER‘S Lesson

DEWEY! There’s a Cat in the Library

DEXTER Gets Dressed

JAYDEN’s Rescue

JULIUS, The Baby of the World

KYLE’s First Crush

LIAM Goes Poo in the Toilet

MILO series

MILTON’s Secret

OLIVER Who Would Not Sleep

OSCAR: The Big Adventure of a Little Sock Monkey

OTIS

OWEN

PHINEAS & Ferb series

Flat STANLEY series

WALTER the Farting Dog series

Max, the name of both the child hero and the young actor who plays him in Where The Wild Things Are, is one of the hottest boys’ names these days.

Max can stand on its own or may be a short form of the ancient Roman name Maximus, which means “greatest,” or of Maximilian or Maxwell.  It’s one of the down-to-earth cigar-chomping grandpa names last popular a hundred years ago and enjoying a huge revival now.  Like brothers Sam and Jake, Max is unpretentious and friendly but also sounds cool.

Celebrities led the way in launching the revival of the name, starting in the late 70s and early 80s.  Stars who are the parents of now-grown kids named Max include Dustin Hoffman, Henry Winkler, Steven Spielberg, and Nora Ephron & Carl Bernstein.

(more…)

The Harry Potter books are a name lover’s dream, author J. K. Rowling being probably the most prolific and creative character namer since Charles Dickens.  Her seven Harry Potter books have an enormous cast of magical wizards and wizards-in-training, witches, ghosts, Hogwarts School professors and students–most of them named with great gusto, humor, and a genius for witty wordplay and cleverly engineered misspellings, interweaving Greek and Latin roots with skill and panache.  Like Dickens, Rowling takes delight in matching name to nature and employs symbolism as well, as for instance calling Harry’s good and pure mother Lily.

A favorite trick of hers is drawing characters’ names from the realm of astronomy, thus producing such celestial names as:

ANDROMEDA –a constellation in the Northern sky

BELLATRIX — a star in the constellation Orion

CASSIOPEIA — another constellation in the Northern sky

DRACO  — a constellation known as Draco the Dragon

LUNA  –  the moon

POLLUX  — one of the twin stars of Gemini

SCORPIUS –  a constellation representing a scorpion

SIRIUS   — the brightest star in the night sky (more…)

During the hundred times you’ve watched The Wizard of Oz, you may have noticed that it isn’t a particularly fertile source of interesting names.  There’s Dorothy of course, and Aunty Em and Uncle Henry, plus the farm names of Dorothy’s companions on the Yellow Brick Road–Hunk, Hickory and Zeke–and the nasty, bike-pedaling Miss Elvira Gulch.

But it happens that this was just the first in a series of Oz books.  L. Frank Baum himself wrote 13 more, with titles such as The Patchwork Girl of Oz and Rinkitink in Oz, and then other authors stepped in to bring the number up to 40.  Just looking at the Baum creations alone, you enter a wonderland of wildly inventive appellations of the Princess-Fluff/Professor Nowitall variety–not particularly baby-appropriate– (more…)

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