Unusual Baby Names from Literature - for Girls

Many of the admirable, attractive, or otherwise memorable female characters in literature bear uncommon names. If you are hoping to name your daughter something lovely but still (relatively) rare, consider these potential baby names, all extracted from novels and plays. Of course, this list is by no means exhaustive, so if you have an addition, please submit a comment to the article.

Unusual Baby Names from Literature - For Girls: Clarissa
Long before teen actress Melissa Joan Hart appeared on TV's Clarissa Explains It All, British author Samuel Richardson told the tale of a woman named Clarissa, whose sense of self, though dangerous and compromising, leads to dignified rememberance after her unconventional life. The laboriously long 18th century novel is called Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady.

Unusual Baby Names from Literature - For Girls: Pearl
Hester Prynne's baby in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Pearl is a difficult child but a powerful symbol for acquired wisdom. If you've conceived a child out of wedlock and want an old-fashioned name that also flips off the establishment with a keen sense of irony, try Pearl.

Unusual Baby Names from Literature - For Girls: Desdemona
One of Shakespeare's resptecable and ostensibly self-sacrificing female characters (as the wife of Othello), Desdemona has a beautiful yet foreboding ring to it. Parents looking for a four-syllable name with some weight behind it may like Desdemona.

Unusual Baby Names from Literature - For Girls: Tess
I have always looked at Hardy's Tess (of the D'Urbervilles, that is) as an admirable character whose life choices result in an eerie wisdom for her representative daughter, though this is not explored in the novel. She is passionate enough to kill the man who keeps her, and while her own life is doomed, her daughter may have a chance at happiness.

Unusual Baby Names from Literature - For Girls: Estella
Cruel and calculating - but captivating to Pip and to us - Estella shines in Dickens' Great Expectations. Although the name "Stella" has skyrocketed from oblivion into the top 250 female names in 2005, adding the E makes it offbeat, perhaps due to this potency of this character.

Unusual Baby Names from Literature - For Girls: Antonia
In the American favorite by Willa Cather, the title character demonstrates the tenacity and charm of a European immigrant on Nebraska's frontier. An accent should appear above the first A to notate the proper stress.

Unusual Baby Names from Literature - For Girls: Nora
A poignant critique of gender roles, Ibsen's A Doll's House remains a moving tale, still applicable to marriage over 100 years after it appeared in Norway. Through reflection and crisis, the central character, Nora, emerges from a stale marriage to confront the world. She is likable, respectable, and utterly real.

Unusual Baby Names from Literature - For Girls: Olive
In The Bostonians by Henry James, Olive is a satirization of Boston feminism in the late 1800s - perhaps not the most flattering portrait. Of course, Henry James is such a cynic that readers today are likely to soften their view of Olive. But this is the novel which gave rise to the term "Boston marriage" - so it's got lesbian tones.