Bacon405's list "A few names" of 4 great name ideas: Amelia - Addelynn!

A few names

Amelia is one of the hottest <a href="https://nameberry.com/girls-names">girls' names</a>, a successor to the megapopular Emma and Emily. Amelia, the Number 2 choice in England, is now also comfortably ensconced in the US Top 10, where it ranked as the third most popular name for girls in 2024. 
 
Now the most popular <a href="https://nameberry.com/search/girls-names/a">girl name starting with A</a>, Amelia is also a Top 10 girls' name in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and Poland. So while Emilia and Emelia are sound-alike names, it's the Amelia version that's on the fast track. 
 
Amelia is derived from the German name Amalia, which in turn is a variation of Amalberga. The root, amal, is a Germanic word meaning "work," and in the context of female given names suggests themes of fertility as well as productivity. Aemilia, the name from which Emily is derived, is unrelated to Amelia.
 
Kids might associate Amelia with the wacky children's book character Amelia Bedelia, while adults could appreciate it as the eponymous heroine of the Henry Fielding novel. Amelia also appears in novels by Trollope and Thackeray, as a Harry Potter name, and as detective Amelia Peabody in the Elizabeth Peters series. Angelina Jolie played patrol cop Amelia Donaghy in The Bone Collector.
 
Amelia became a British royal name via the daughters of Kings George II and III. American heroes who have inspired a new generation of namesakes are aviatrix Amelia Earhart and feminist Amelia Bloomer.
 
Trivia tidbit: Amelia is the birth name of Minnie Driver. As for international forms, there's Amelie, Amalia, and Amelina, while nickname options include Milly, Mila, Lia, Mimi, and Ami.

Amelia

Ella is a sweet, simple name that owes much of its current popularity to the popularity of other names, from Emma to Bella to Emily to Ellie.

Ella is one of those names that has ranked in the US Top 1000 nearly every year since the records began in the late 19th-century. While it did fall out of fashion in the mid-1980s, it shot back up the charts in the 90s, and, as of 2023, it had been a Top 50 choice for two decades. 
 
Easy to say and spell, Ella, like Finn, Liam, Leo, and Emma, is an international favorite, making the Top 100 throughout the Anglophone world as well as in a range of French and German-speaking, Scandinavian, and Eastern European countries. 

Which makes sense for a name with parallel derivations in several different languages and cultures. Ella is the Norman variation of the Germanic Alia—itself a nickname for names containing the element ali. In English speaking countries and Scandinavia, Ella developed as a diminutive for names beginning with El-, such as Eleanor and Elizabeth. Ella is also a Hebrew name, referring to a tree in the pistachio family or in modern Hebrew, "goddess."

Ella can also be a short form of names that begin with El, such as Eleanor and Elizabeth, as well as those that end with -ella, from Gabriella to Luella to Rafaella. And it can be one of the many routes to the super-popular nickname Ellie.

Ella has long been a favorite celebrity baby name, chosen by several stars for their now-mostly-grown daughters by John Travolta, Warren Beatty, Ben Stiller, Eric Clapton, Jeff Gordon, Ioan Gruffudd, Alex Rodriguez, and Mark Wahlberg.
 
Iconic singer Ella Fitzgerald adds a jazzy edge. And Ella Enchanted gave the name some princess-y pop.

Ella

Madelynn is the fourth most popular variation of this durably popular name, with Madelyn ranking first in the Top 100, Madeline dropping to the Number 2 spot, the French Madeleine taking third place, and Madelynn coming in fourth but still ranking in the Top 500.

In fact, all forms of this name have held their own over the past 20 years, proving that this name is more than a momentary fad. The only problem, if you see it as one, is that there are an awful lot of Madelynns, little and not so little, around at this point, nearly 8000 baby girls born in the US last year alone with just these four spellings. That's as many baby girls as were named Harper.

And then there are all the other spelling variations plus all the little girls called Maddie. It's an adorable name with an august history, but it is much more popular than you might guess.

A few names

About this list

The names

Amelia

Ella

Madelynn

Addelynn