Alana, in all its various spellings, was at one time reserved for daughters of dads named Alan, but is now much more widespread. It came into prominence via model/actress/celeb spouse Alana Hamilton Stewart. 
 While Alana is by far the most popular spelling, the name can also be spelled Alanna and Alannah, as in musician Alannah Myles. The variation Alanis (via singer Alanis Morissette (daughter of an Alan) sounds a bit more original, as does the Hawaiian Alani, now in the Top 500. Alaina is another popular variation.
 
Alana is a Hawaiian word meaning "awakening," and the variation Alannah is a Gaelic term of endearment for a child.

Alana

Folk singer DiFranco popularized this simple, appealing form. In Igbo mythology, Ani is one of the names of the goddess of the earth, fertility, creativity, and morality.

Anwen is one of the simplest and best of the classic Welsh girls' names, more unusual than Bronwen but with the same serene feel. 

Anwen

This name has it all - looks, brains, charms and an international sound that can go anywhere. 

Arinya

Astrid has been a Scandinavian royal name since the tenth century, and many people associated it with the Swedish author of the Pippi Longstocking stories, Astrid Lindgren. Astrid is derived from the name Ástríðr, which is made up of the Old Norse elements that mean "god" and "beautiful." 
Related names include Asta, a diminutive used throughout Scandinavia, and Astride, the French form. Despite their similarities, Astrid is unrelated to Astra, a Latin name meaning "of the stars."
 
Astrid has never really assimilated into our culture the way Ingrid did, but with the renewed interest in international names, Astrid might be worth consideration by parents with Norse roots. 
 
Astrid is the name of the teenage heroine of Janet Finch's 1999 novel White Oleander and has appeared as a character in How to Train Your Dragon and the TV shows Fringe and Once upon a Time.

Astrid

Ataahua

Everything ella, from Ella to Bella to Arabella, is red hot right now. Bella is one of the most, well, beautiful <a href="https://nameberry.com/search/girls-names/b">girl names starting with B</a>. It carried a hint of a nice Old World grandmotherly veneer, until it became attached to Twilight's Bella Swan. 
Bella derived as a diminutive of Isabella and other names with the suffix -bella, such as Anabella and Arabella, but has a meaning all its own: beautiful.That's because Bella is related to the word for "beautiful" in languages including Spanish, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, and Greek. Belle means "beautiful" in French.
 
If you're thinking of naming your daughter Bella, be aware that there are a lot of little girls whose proper names are Isabella, Arabella etc. who are called Bella, so you may hear the name more frequently than you'd guess judging by popularity statistics.
 In pre-Twilight literature, Bella Wilfer is the central character in Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend.
 Mark Ruffalo, Billy Bob Thornton, David Boreanaz and Eddie Murphy are all dads to Bellas. A strong feminist namesake is Bella Abzug. One current Bella is child star turned pop star Bella Thorne, born Annabella.
 Bella was in use as far back as the thirteenth century, then disappeared until the eighteenth when it became fashionable. 
 Today, Bella is among the <a href="https://nameberry.com/popular-names/dogs">most popular dog names</a>.

Bella

Belle has nothing but positive associations, from "belle of the ball" to "Southern belle" to the heroine of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. As if this weren't enough good things, Belle is also one of the most familiar and usable <a href="https://nameberry.com/list/4/baby-names-that-mean-beautiful">names that mean beautiful</a>.
Though it has been overshadowed by the Twilight-influenced Bella and longer forms like Isabella and Annabella, Belle has its own Southern charm and would make a pretty choice as a first or middle name.
 Belle was a Top 100 name in the 1880s, but left the list in 1934. It returned to the US Top 1000 for the first time in 80 years in 2016, only to drop off again in 2021. Its most famous bearer was the legendary Western outlaw, Belle Starr (born Myra); Belle Watling is a character in Gone With the Wind. 
 
Read more about Belle and other <a href="https://nameberry.com/blog/disney-princess-names">Disney Princess Names</a> in our featured blog.

Belle

Like Benita, had some popularity in the fifties. 

Bonita

Bonnie is an adorable nickname name, heading back up the popularity list after a 50-year nap. A Top 100 girls' name throughout the rest of the English-speaking world, Americans are later to jump on the Bonnie bandwagon but now it's trending here too.
 
Bonnie is a word the Scots really do use for pretty, thus the root of this name, from the French bonne. Along with Betty and Bea, Bonnie, is one of the vintage <a href="https://nameberry.com/search/girls-names/b">girls' names starting with B</a>that are back in.
 Gone With the Wind gave Bonnie a big push when Scarlett and Rhett used it for their daughter. Her full name was Eugenie Victoria, but the pet name came from the fact that she had "eyes as blue as the bonnie blue flag." 
 Bonnie's last moment in the limelight came in the late sixties with the film Bonnie and Clyde, about outlaw Bonnie Parker. Now after a long decline, it's finally showing new signs of life, perhaps thanks to the Bonnies in The Vampire Diaries and The Hunger Games, as well as a new miniseries about the 1930s-era bandits.

Bonnie

As 90s and early 2000s favorite Allie is starting to fall, Callie is feeling extra fresh. Callie is a nickname name that is currently more popular on its own than any of its longer versions. 

Callie was popular in the late 1800s when it was in the Top 200 for several years. However the name fell out of favor, eventually falling off the charts for some time. Callie has been rising again since the 70s, and it is now back in the Top 200 once again.

In the popular show Grey's Anatomy, doctor Callie Torez's full name is the Greek Calliope.

Callie

Unusual yet accessible name with the fashionable double-L sound.  Lilting and lovely.

Elili

Harika

Ilona has never been used much in the U.S. and is not a likely candidate for success. 

Ilona

A striking and feminine possibility associated with a modern hero — longtime Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi. 

Indira

In Japanese this name may be written with the characters for "pure; purify; cleanse" (Kiyo/Keo) and "beauty; beautiful" (mi). Like most Japanese names, this is a name that translates well into Anglophone countries, where sweet short names are becoming increasingly popular.

Kyomi

Lada is the Slavic goddess of youth, merriment, beauty and fertility, usually associated with spring.  Her name is referenced in wedding and folk songs in Eastern Europe, but largely unknown in the West.

Lada

Linda will live forever in baby name history for toppling Mary from its four hundred year reign as Number 1. Queen of Names in 1947, Linda has fallen even further in favor than Mary today. 

Linda

Homophonous with Mae and May, the beautiful (literally) Mei is poised to climb the charts. The hero of the 2022 Disney/Pixar film Turning Red is a Chinese-Canadian teen named Meilin "Mei" Lee, which may boost the name ever further.

Mika is a Japanese girls' name that translates easily to English. As a male name, it's a short form of Mikael, the Scandinavian and Finnish form of Michael. Both are spelled and pronounced the same.

Mika

This fairly common Korean girls' name counts Korean actress Lee Mi-Yeon and American composer Serra Miyeun Hwang among notable bearers.

Miyeon

Merinda

This ancient Egyptian queen's name would be best saved for a cat. 

Nefertiti

This adorable cross cultural name updates Naomi and offers an accessible Japanese option. Strikes the right balance by being distinctive without seeming strange.

Nomi

A favorite in Near Eastern cultures, with a charming meaning. 

Rana

Popular Indonesian name that may leave a young girl in an English=speaking country open to teasing.

Ratih

Rosabel, a vintage smoosh name created in the 18th century, feels slightly less frilly than her cousins Rosabelle and Rosabella. It could make for a more distinctive alternative to Isabel, or an <a href="https://nameberry.com/lists/category/unusual-names">unusual name</a> that gets you to sweet nicknames Rosie or Belle.

Rosabel

This slightly more compact version of Sabina has ties to France and Germany. Unlike its sister name, Sabine has never charted in the United States Top 1000. Today, both names are given to roughly the same number of baby girls in the US, about 70 each year.
The Sabines were a tribe in Ancient Italy that went to war with the Romans. According to legend, the Sabine women were kidnapped by the Romans but later affected peace between the warring sides.
Sabine Lisicki is a German professional tennis player. The Sabine River runs through Louisiana.

Sabine

Sena is one of those names that is as obscure in the Western World as it is simple and straightforward. Sena exists as a name in a range of languages and cultures and may be pronounced like Senna (with a soft e) or Sienna.
 
Sena is also a place name, a surname, the name of several groups of people, and the name of a genus of moth as well as a kind of wine, among other things.

Sena

Especially used in Bengal and Bangladesh, Sonali is nowadays considered to mean "golden". Bengali actress Sonali Chowdhury is a notable bearer of this name.

Sonali

Tove is a modern variation of an Old Norse name for which there are no letters on the twenty-first century keyboard. It's related to Thor, and Tove and Tuva are the forms that survive and thrive in modern Scandinavia.
 
Internationally, its best known wearers include Moomins creator Tove Jansson, and Swedish singer Tove Lo.
 
Beyond Tove, other popular <a href="https://nameberry.com/baby-names/173/scandinavian-names">Scandinavian names</a> not well known outside of the Nordic countries include Toril, Maja, Tyra, and Ebba.

Tove

This Persian name with an Old Testament pedigree has a warm Sasha-like feel. The Biblical Vashti was a queen who refused her husband's orders to appear naked in front of his party guests and so was deposed in favor of Esther. For her independent spirit, Vashti has become something of a feminist icon.

Vashti

The name of a heavenly planet and the Roman goddess of beauty and love was an intimidating no-no until tennis champ Venus Williams put an athletic, modern spin on it. 
 
Associated with the Greek Aphrodite, in the Roman pantheon, Venus (whose name probably means "desire") was considered the mother of the Roman people and has always been a favorite subject of artists — most well-known being the prehistoric sculpture Venus of Willendorf, the ancient Venus de Milo and Botticelli's The Birth of Venus.

Venus

Zaina is the simplified form of Zaynab, the name of the eldest daughter of Muhammad.  Zayna is another accepted spelling; the name is also found as Zainabu, which exists in both the Arabic and Swahili languages. These are all feminizations of the male Zayn, also spelled Zain, which sounds exactly like but is a fundamentally different name from Zane, rooted in Western culture as a variation of John. Confused yet? Zaina is an unusual name that is simple to understand and pronounce, all pluses, though the many spelling variations may cause mixups.

Zaina

Zuri migrated, at least to American sensibilities, to the feminine side when an Ohio zoo used it for a female giraffe. For either gender, Zuri is an attractive name with the usual Z-initial zest. Zuri Ross also is a character on the Disney show Jessie. Basketball megastar Lebron James and his wife Savannah named their baby girl Zhuri, a slightly different spelling, in 2014.

Zuri

dominogirl's list "Names that mean beautiful" of 35 great name ideas: Alana - Zuri!

Names that mean beautiful

Do you want a name for your child that tells her how beautiful she is? Well, then here's a list full of beautiful names that actually mean 'beautiful'. From Alana to Zuri you'll find unique baby names of all origins. You have a name that means 'beautiful' in your language and isn't here? Feel free to contact me.