Katerina and its near-identical twin Katarina have a pleasingly lilting European sound, though for some Americans they may be uncomfortably close to Katrina, which will be linked for a long time to the hurricane that devastated New Orleans.

A midcentury Catholic classic that's not chosen by many parents today. Leonard Cohen fans might think of the beautiful song So Long, Marianne, named for his lover and muse Marianne Ihlen.

Heathcliff is the name of the original passionate macho hero of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and also of the cartoon cat. It was chosen by fashionista Lucy Sykes for her son, and inspired the late Heath Ledger's name. But otherwise it's barely used, and perhaps a bit much of a namesake. For a modern boy we'd recommend Heath....or Cliff.

This variation of Theodore is familiar here mostly via the great Russian novelist Dostoyevsky. It was also the name of three early tsars of Russia.

Rochester was Jack Benny's famous valet and sidekick, played by early African-American comic Eddie Anderson.