A Literary Family

  1. Scarlet
    • Origin:

      Color name
    • Description:

      The Scarlet spelling makes it less a name, less Gone With The Wind and Scarlett Johansson, and more the bright red color that inspired it in the first place.
  2. Elinor
    • Origin:

      Spelling variation of Eleanor, English, French
    • Description:

      A sleek, literary alternative to Eleanor, this stripped back form of Eleanor is a well-established spelling. It notably appears in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, borne by Elinor Dashwood, along with George Eliot's Middlemarch and Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind , as a middle name.
  3. Katerina
    • Origin:

      Macedonian, Czech, Russian, Bulgarian, and Greek form of Katherine
    • Description:

      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.
  4. Fyodor
    • Origin:

      Russian variation of Theodore
    • Meaning:

      "God's gift"
    • Description:

      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.
  5. Rochester
    • Origin:

      English
    • Meaning:

      "stone camp or fortress"
    • Description:

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