Names with real connections to documented people, published works, and living traditions. Every entry is curated by hand, states the year or period involved, and links to its reference.
Collection
Names from novels and plays that have stayed in use for generations, with the work and year they appear in.
8 entries
Fitzwilliam Darcy
Pride and Prejudice, 1813
Reserved landowner in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813). Darcy began as an English surname taken from a place name before becoming a given name.
Literary & Mythological Names
Atticus Finch
To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960
Small-town lawyer and father in Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus is a Roman family name used in classical antiquity, not an invention of the novel.
Literary & Mythological Names
Lyra Belacqua
Northern Lights, 1995
Central character of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, beginning with Northern Lights in 1995. Lyra is also the name of a small constellation and relates to the lyre.
Literary & Mythological Names
Cordelia
King Lear, c. 1606
Youngest daughter of Lear in Shakespeare's King Lear. The name's origin is not settled among reference sources, and it appears in English use before the play.
Literary & Mythological Names
Athena
Greek mythology
Greek goddess associated with wisdom, craft, and strategic warfare, and patron deity of Athens. Her mythology is recorded in sources including Homer and Hesiod.
Literary & Mythological Names
Freyja
Norse mythology
Norse goddess associated with love, beauty, and battle, attested in the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda. The modern spelling Freya is an English form of Freyja.
Literary & Mythological Names
King Arthur
Arthurian legend, medieval
Legendary British king at the centre of Arthurian romance, recorded from the twelfth century in works such as Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.
Literary & Mythological Names
Anansi
Akan folklore
Spider trickster of Akan oral tradition in present-day Ghana, carried to the Caribbean through the transatlantic slave trade and central to Anansi stories across the region.
Literary & Mythological Names
Names That Changed History
Eleven names carried by documented figures in science, medicine, civil rights, exploration, and invention, each with dates and a reference.
Classic Literary Names
Names from novels and plays that have stayed in use for generations, with the work and year they appear in.
Names Inspired by Scientists
Mathematicians, chemists, and physicists whose names remain in common use today.
Timeless Film Names
Screen characters from 1939 to 2001, noting which names were invented for the story and which pre-date it.
Names of Modern Icons
Six contemporary figures in sport, letters, dance, and activism, described factually with no endorsement implied.
Names With Remarkable Stories
Mythological and folkloric names whose stories are recorded in classical and oral traditions across cultures.
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