Badass Girl Names

Aviator is equally appropriate for a girl, of course, but lovers of Beatrix and Bellatrix might appreciate the spiky sound of this unique occupational name.

Aviatrix

Menace fits into the growing group of badass baby names that work for boys or girls. Menace is exceedingly rare but has future possibilities.

Menace

Charming nature name made even more appealing by the connection to iconic nurse and statistician Florence Nightingale.

Nightingale

Alabama is a hot southern place-name, picking up from Georgia and Savannah. This is not a geographical name come lately, though--there have been girls named Alabama dating back well over a century.
 Hip couple Drea de Matteo and Shooter Jennings named their daughter Alabama Gypsy Rose, and rocker Travis Barker has an Alabama Louella.

Alabama

An overlooked name from Greek mythology, Pallas is both an epithet for the goddess of wisdom and a name in its own right, borne by a daughter of the sea god Triton who was raised alongside the aforementioned goddess. She was accidentally killed by Athena during an athletics festival, when Zeus distracted her. Athena went on to take the epithet in her honor.
 
Pallas is often interpreted as meaning "youth, young woman, or maiden", though some sources have suggested it could alternatively mean "to brandish". This latter meaning likely comes from another versions of Greek legend, in which the name is given to a Giant son of Gaia, whom Athena slays and then flays, taking his skin as a trophy.
 
Pronounced as PAHL-LAHS in Classical Greek and PAL-uhs in English, it was chosen in 2026 by author Coco Mellors for her daughter, Pallas Star. She and her husband chose the name for the goddess, having read a book about her to their son while his was in the NICU.

Pallas

Bold and strong, Casimira is a feminine form of Casimir, which ultimately derives from the Slavic elements kaziti and mirŭ meaning "to destroy" and "peace, world". A notable bearer is Casimira Rodríguez who was Bolivia's first indigenous Quechua woman to serve as a government minister.

Casimira

This highly unusual name -- the Halycyone was a mythic bird who could calm the seas -- conjures up images of utter peace and tranquility because of the phrase "Halycon days"...and the sleeping pill. 

Halcyon

Tornado first meant thunderstorm and only later came to mean whirlwind, the common modern meaning.  More recently, Tornado is the first name of a tennis-playing teen whose sister is called the equally attention-getting Hurricane.  Both names work for either gender, if you think you can withstand the storm jokes.

Tornado

Hurricane is a storm, but it's also an <a href="https://nameberry.com/list/519/american-baby-names">American name</a>, thanks to rising tennis star Hurricane Black -- whose sister's name is Tornado. There's no reason this tempestuous choice can't work for boys too, inasfar as the name can work for any child. As a name, Hurricane is definitely original and attention-getting, but is it a name you'd want to carry around for life?

Hurricane

Novelist Djuna Barnes introduced this interesting and unusual name with an arty, Bohemian feel to the mix. She explained that it was invented by her father, saying it came about as a combination of her infant brother's pronunciation of the word moon as 'nuna' and a character in a book her father was reading, Prince Djalma, and so he "put the Dj onto the 'una'." Result: the silent-D pronunciation (as in Django) of JOON-a.
 Fellow writer Anais Nin adopted the name for a character in her 1950 novel The Four Chambered Heart, and Woody Allen had a young girl called Djuna in his 1996 film Everyone Says I Love You — nicknamed DJ.
 All in an, an attractive and intriguing possibility, that could be associated with the names Junia or Una, or to the word "moon".

Djuna

Diablo Cody, self-named (she's really Brook Busey) screenwriter of Juno, singlehandedly helped popularize not just her heroine's name and her own but all o-ending names for girls. You don't need us to tell you that it takes a brave parent, in every way, to name a baby Diablo. Diablo is one of the <a href="https://nameberry.com/baby-names/161/spanish-names">Spanish baby names</a> that diverges furthest from the well-paved camino.

Diablo

In Buddhism, Dharma embodies the basic principles of cosmic existence--making it a fitting name for the hippyish character on the sitcom Dharma and Greg, whose middle name was Freedom. 
 Students of Beat literature will be familiar with the name via part of the title of a Jack Kerouac novel, <e>Dharma Bums.
 Dharma tends to evoke the feeling of good karma.

Dharma

The Anatolian mother goddess Cybele had a place in Greek, Roman, Trojan, and Anatolian mythology. Today, she has special meaning as a symbol of gender nonconformity.

In ancient Rome, Cybele's cult included followers called the Galli, male by birth but feminine in appearance, who often castrated themselves.

Cybele is a different name and a different figure from Sibyl or Sybil, the collective name for the Greek and Roman female prophets of legend. But the pronunciation is similar and contemporary English speakers will inevitably conflate the names and their inspiration.

Cybele

While Sixtine is a name with ancient roots that's popular in modern-day France, it's hard to imagine it gaining hold in English-speaking lands, given its similarity to the number sixteen and its even-more-problematic similarity to the word "sexting."  You wouldn't do that to your daughter.

Sixtine

This biblical place-name for the region now known as Yemen started to feel fresh again as the name of the heroine of Zoe Heller's Notes on a Scandal, played on screen by Cate Blanchett.
 Sheba is probably more ready for prime time than the long-form mother name, although Bathsheba, which means "seventh daughter," has a rich Biblical and literary history. 
 The Queen of Sheba was a monarch of the ancient kingdom of, yes, Sheba

Sheba

Libertad is the forceful name recently given to his daughter by Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal. English equivalent Liberty has been in use for girls for some time. Libertad might be considered a Spanish virtue name or word name. See our list of other <a href="http://nameberry.com/list/253/spanish-word-names">Spanish word names</a>.

Libertad

 This is an ultra-hot category for baby girls, with names such as Nova, Lilith, and Scarlett ranking higher than ever before on the US popularity charts.

 include Elsa, Harley, Jolene, Milan, and Ramona. 

 such as Billie, Hollis, and Jupiter are on the rise.

Badass names for girls include those connected to 

badass figures, both real, historical and fictional

, such as Zora Neale Hurston, Cleopatra, Wednesday Addams, and Khaleesi.

, including Pandora, Artemis, and Venus. Even the Bible includes some badass names for girls, like Delilah and -- wow, very badass -- Jezebel.

Explore our collection of badass girl names.

Badass girl names have attitude and include choices such as Scarlett, Salome, and Vesper, with meanings, origins, and popularity, cool, unique names, mythological names, historical names, fictional badass names, book, TV, movie characters, attitude, sass (Page 13)