fairfax512's list "My Family Tree" of 5 great name ideas: Hattiebell - Ouskaloosa!

My Family Tree

Some of the more interesting names found in my family tree. Avoiding the Marys, Janes, Johns, Thomas', pretty much the ones that aren't typical run of the mill popular.

Hattiebell

Calla is a botanical name that is much more distinctive than popular Lily or similar Callie. Rarely heard today, it did appear in the popularity lists in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
 
Ultimately from the Greek kallos meaning "beauty", Calla is the name of two separate but similar plants, notably the white calla lily. Given to 130 girls year, it is currently less popular than similar choices such as Kaia, Clara, Cali, Willa, and Calliope, but wouldn't seem out of place among them. 
 Calla is the eponymous heroine of the Rebecca Wells novel The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder, and there's an English rock band called Her Name is Calla.
 Actress Mare Winningham named her daughter Calla way back in 1987 while sound-alike Cala is an Arabic name meaning fortress.

Calla

In the midcentury US, putting an ene or een or ine at the end of any name made it more stylish. Today, it usually has the opposite effect.

Laurene does have a measure of class thanks to businesswoman and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve and owner of The Atlantic, among many other ventures.

Laurene

Thanks to Elmer Fudd, Elmer the Cow, Elmer the elephant, Elmer's glue and the similar Elmo, this name might, to some feel like a jokey choice: the quintessential so-far-out-it-will-always-be-out name. And yet, the US statistics don't quite support that perception. 
 
Derived from the Old English Æðelmær meaning "noble and famous", Elmer was in the US Top 100 from the late 19th century up until the late 1930s, before it began to decline. It didn't drop out of the Top 1000 until 2009 however and has been received by at least 135 babies every year since.
 
And, with its trendy El-beginning, popular er-ending, and potential nature-nickname, Elm, there might be potential for Elmer to rise again. A recent year saw it given to nearly 180 babies, meaning it ranked alongside Pslam, Haziel, Kasey, Torin, and Wiley. 
 
 One literary reference is the title character in Sinclair Lewis's novel Elmer Gantry; real life namesakes include playwright Elmer Rice, composer Elmer Bernstein and early American politicians Jonathan and Ebenezer Elmer. "Elmer's Tune" is a jazz classic.