What's in a name?

[soulsplinter8.livejournal.com]

What are your favorite literary names and/or mythological names? Authors, characters, place names...anything you can think of!

This is an extremely incomplete list, but some favorites of mine are:


Guinevere
Rhiannon
Calliope
Ophelia
Rowena
Antigone
Persephone
Eowyn
Desdemona
Ismene
Lavinia
Beatrice
Isolde
Daphne
Viola
Arwen
Maeve
Jane (Austen!)
Elinor (Sense & Sensibility...my favorite Austen character)
Olivia
Mercedes


Lysander
Milton (John, that is)
Leander
Luther
Caspian
Sebastian
Gawain
Iago
Gilbert (from Anne of Green Gables...he has immortalized this name for me)
Tristan
Hector
Arthur
Fionn
Claudio
Owain
Percival
Priam
Seamus (Heaney, haha)
Lewis (C.S.)
Wesley
Dickon
Oberon
Mercutio

Comments

[cxtxc.livejournal.com]

I've become really fond of the name Isolde since seeing the movie. Ophelia is another.

[jojodancer77.livejournal.com]

I love Arwen and Caspian the best. Plan to use Arwen someday!

[crzydimond.livejournal.com]

I like these 2:
Eowyn
Arwen

and:
Galadriel - I think this is really pretty

Guess what I was obsessed with for a few years lol.

Also..

Ariel [This was a male character though..]
Lucio
Sebastian
Helena

I read too much.

[fruhlings.livejournal.com]

Daphne and Leander are on my favorites list. :)

Other favorites include:
Penelope
Helen (love how this one is so classic!)
Phoebe
Christine (from Mourning Becomes Electra)
Juliet


James/Jamie (from Long Day's Journey Into Night)
Orin (from Mourning Becomes Electra)
Adam
Edmund (I think I like this more as a middle name)
Richard

Re: I read too much.

[soulsplinter8.livejournal.com]

I love the name Elektra too (but spelled with the "k" instead of a "c"). I knew a girl in high school whose name was Eleni Elektra, and I think to this day it is still one of the most beautiful names I have ever heard.

[roaring.livejournal.com]

I've always loved the names Ophelia and Isolde.

[americandiva.livejournal.com]

I love Rhiannon. Olivia and Mercades are also really nice but I don't think I'd actually use them.

I also like Sebastian (but cant use it bc its my friends name) Tristan and Seamus (love it!)

[0o-faerie.livejournal.com]

I like Ariel, Arwen, Sadie and Tamsin. The last two are both from the book 'My Summer of Love', which I loved =) I also like Astrid, from White Oleander,
& I kinda like Blue, mostly because Special Topics in Calamity Physics is my favourite book, but I wouldn't use that one. Or only as a middle name ;)

[soulsplinter8.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I am a HUGE Shakespeare buff. And being such, I love lots of the names, but could never use many of them for various reasons (stigma, associations, etc.). For example, I could never name a daughter Olivia, Ophelia, or Juliet...just because the names are so popular/have stigma behind them. I also LOVE the names Iago, Oberon, and Mercutio...but I could never name a son that. Maybe a cat, haha.

I love the name Lysander as well. And Elsinor. :o)

[pixietangerine.livejournal.com]

oh, rowena, that's a name i really like but always forget about. can you tell me who she was? mythological/literature wise?

[soulsplinter8.livejournal.com]

It's from the book Ivanhoe, which is about a knight of that name who comes back to England after going to the Crusades to make himself worthy of his guardian's approval (he was raised by a man who was not his father, but was like a father to him), as well as to win the hand of his guardian's fair daughter, Rowena. They grew up together, playing as children, and they fell in love...one of the reasons Rowena's father sent Ivanhoe off on the Crusades. He disapproved. She is due to be married to another man, but Ivanhoe fights desperately for her and eventually wins her and her father's approval. It's a beautiful story. Of course, there's much more to it than just that, but that's the Rowena explanation. :o)

[searlait.livejournal.com]

I love the names Ophelia and Penelope, as well as Regan and Miranda.

Other female Shakespearean names that tickle me:
Adrian
Adriana
Audrey
Desdemona
Frederick
Helena
Imogen
Iris
Lennox
Perdita

The names seem very classy to me.