Literary Names: How To Find One You Love In A Book

There are countless names that have been plucked from books and transferred to birth certificates, including current favorites like Atticus (To Kill a Mockingbird) and Holden (Catcher in the Rye) and Emma (Emma), not to mention Romeo and Juliet.

But there are lots more literary names that are not as obvious, some from more obscure books, others of less prominent characters.  Here are 50 such  examples of creative literary names that have not made it into the mainstream, but could make interesting choices—25 of them for each gender.

But bear in mind that though these names all have literary cred, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they’re attached to the most heroic characters.

GIRLS

1. Abra – East of Eden, John Steinbeck

2. Adelaida – The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

3. Alia – Dune, Frank Herbert; Midnight’s Child, Salman Rushdie

4. Clea —  The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell

5. Clemency— The Battle of Life, Charles Dickens

6. Cosette – Les Misérables, Victor Hugo

7. Dabney —Delta Wedding, Eudora Welty

8. Fantine – Les Misérables, Victor Hugo

9. Honoria —  Bleak House, Charles Dickens; Babylon Revisited, F. Scott Fitzgerald

10. Lindo – The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

11. Lizaveta – The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

12. Malta — Bleak House, Charles Dickens

13. Marilla —  Anne of Green Gables, L. M. Montgomery

14. Medora —  The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton

15. Meridian – Meridian, Alice Walker

16. Oriane – Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust

17. Persis – The Rise of Silas Lapham,  William Dean Howells

18. Placida — Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Márquez

19. Temple— Sanctuary, Requiem for a Nun, William Faulkner

20. Thomasin— Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy

21. Trillian—Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

22. Valencia – Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

23. Velvet – National Velvet, Enid Bagnold

24. Waverly – The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

25. Zenobia – The Blithedale Romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne; Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton

BOYS

1. Arkady—Crime and Punishment, A Raw Youth, Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev

2. Brinker – A Separate Peace, John Knowles

3. Camden – Middlemarch, George Eliot

4. Carver — Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore

5. Caspian – The Return to Narnia, C. S. Lewis

6. Cato —Henry and Cato, Iris Murdoch

7. Dexios – The King Must Die, Mary Renault

8. Dunstan – Silas Marner, George Eliot

9. Golden – Jazz , Toni Morrison

10. Joss — Jamaica Inn, Daphne Du Maurier

11. Jupiter — The Gold Bug, Edgar Allan Poe

12. Kenyon —The Marble Faun, Nathaniel Hawthorne

13. Lemuel – Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift; A Cool Million, Nathanael West

14. Marius — Les Misérables, Victor Hugo

15. Ozias — Armadale, Wilkie Collins

16. Phileas – Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne

17. Reuven—The Chosen, Chaim Potok

18. Rodion – Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

19. Seneca — Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis

20. Septimus – The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens; Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

21. Shreve – Absalom, Absalom, William Faulkner

22. St. John (pron. Sinjin) —Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

23. Tertius – Middlemarch, George Eliot

24. Victory – Jazz, Toni Morrison

25. Yancey — Cimarron, Edna Ferber