Girls Names from Shakespeare's Comedies

Portia is a perfect role-model name, relating to Shakespeare's brilliant and spirited lawyer in The Merchant of Venice, and is now also a Hunger Games name .

Rosalind has a distinguished literary history – used and popularized by Edmund Spenser and Shakespeare via one of his most charming heroines, in As You Like It. Along with a bouquet of other Rose names, Rosalind might be ready for a comeback.

Rosaline, which can be pronounced to rhyme with mine or mean in its final syllable, has a deeper, richer pedigree than it might seem. Rosaline was used twice by Shakespeare and was also used in the poetry of Edmund Spenser. While we prefer the stronger-sounding Rosalind or Rosamund, Rosaline deserves another contemporary look.

This original form of the name -- the more familiar Sylvia spelling came later -- seems more modern now.

This name of the queen of the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream has a delicate, lacy charm similar to Tatiana's, but that first syllable could cause embarrassing problems.

A saint's name with a noteworthy literary background, including uses by Shakespeare in Two Gentlemen of Verona and Much Ado About Nothing, by Ben Johnson, Walter Scott, Longfellow, D. H. Lawrence and Neil Gaiman. In real life, her two most well known representatives are writer Ursula Le Guin and actress Ursula Andress. In literature, there is also Ursula Iguaran, a key, long-lived character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's major work, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Viola has several positive elements going for it: the rhythm of the musical instrument, the association with the flower, the trending 'Vi' beginning and its leading role in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.