For the future spawns

In Basque mythology, Lamina are mermaid-like creatures (they can also have duck tails) who grant wishes.

Lavi is a rare member of the trendy leonine group of names in the US, but in Israel it's among the Top 10 boy names. It makes a good alternative to Levi.

Lavinia is a charmingly prim and proper Victorian-sounding name which actually dates back to classical mythology, where it was the name of the wife of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who was considered the mother of the Roman people.

Leocadia marries a mix of sounds: the strength of a lion, with a rhythmic Latin ending.

For centuries this name was associated primarily with the towering figure of Italian Renaissance painter-scientist-inventor Leonardo da Vinci, and was scarcely used outside the Latin culture.

Levi, lighter and more energetic than most biblical names, with its up vowel ending, combines Old Testament gravitas with the casual flair associated with Levi Strauss jeans.

Lionel is one leonine name that hasn't taken off as cousins Leo and Leonardo have, though it did reenter the Top 1000 in 2010 after several years away; it was at its highest point in the 1920s and 1930s.

The related Lucas and Luke are both hugely popular boy names in the US and internationally, and now Luca has joined them on boys' popularity lists around the world.

Lucian is a sleeker, more sophisticated version of Lucius that is climbing in tandem with other Lu-starting names.

Lucifer is the name of the archangel cast into hell -- theologians disagree on whether he and Satan are separate beings -- and as such has long been on the forbidden list for religious parents. Still banned in New Zealand, Lucifer is occasionally used in the contemporary U.S.: Six boys were given the name in the most recent year counted.

Lumi may be a rare girls' name in the USA and England, but it comes in the Top 50 in Finland, where it means snow. Given the popularity of Winter, Holly, Ivy and many other wintery-christmassy names, we think that short and spunky Lumi definitely has potential for greater usage outside its home country as one of the more unusual names for Christmas babies.

Unisex Japanese name more often given to boys.

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.

Mikasa references Mount Mikasa, a mountain in Japan with three peaks, thought to look like bamboo hats. The Mikasa battleship was named after the mountain.