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Alabama
In Save Me the Waltz, by Zelda Fitzgerald, Alabama Beggs is a quintessential Southern belle, and the archetypal Jazz Age flapper - much like the author herself. -
Amaryllis
Back to Methuselah, by George Bernard Shaw, has a character named Amaryllis who is a baby born from an egg right on stage, who emerges at age 16. -
Amory
Amory Blaine is the protagonist of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel This Side of Paradise. -
Arabella
In the Georgette Heyer novel Arabella, the main character was the eldest daughter of a penniless country clergyman who was sent to stay with her godmother in London, where she might find a suitable husband. -
Aramis
One of Dumas' swashbuckling Three Musketeers. -
Atticus
The upstanding, noble charaqcter of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. -
Aurora
Aurora Leigh is the name of an epic poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Aurora Greenway was the moving Shirley Maclaine character in Terms of Endearment. -
Barnaby
The name of the good-natured hero of Dickens's novel Barnaby Rudge. -
Beale
Surname of a character in Henry James' What Maisie Knew. -
Blue
In Playland, by John Gregory Dunne, Blue Tyler is a precocious child star whose life does not have a Shirley Temple happy ending. -
Briony
Briony Tallis is one of the sisters in the book Atonement by Ian McEwan. -
Brom
Attached to one of the heroes of Christopher Paolini's megapopular fantasy novel Eragon
Also Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, character from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. -
Cato
Cato appears in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
Cato is also a Hunger Games character. -
Catriona
Robert Louis Stevenson's 1893 Catriona is the sequel to Kidnapped. -
Clea
In The Alexandria Quartet, by Lawrence Durrell, Clea Montis is an artist living in Alexandria, Egypt. -
Charity
In the Dickens novel Martin Chuzzlewit there are sisters named Charity and Mercy; the musical Sweet Charity is named after its title character, Charity Hope Valentine. In the novel Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Charity Burbage is a Muggle Studies teacher at Hogwarts. -
Clarissa
Clarissa Harlowe is the beautiful and saintly heroine of the novel Clarissa; or, the History of a Young Lady. Clarissa was also the title character of Mrs Dalloway. -
Cosette
Cosette is best known as the heroine of Les Miserables. -
Crow
From Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, the story of a boy named Kafka ('crow' in Czech). -
Daisy
The innocent Daisy Miller in the Henry James novella, and as Daisy Buchanan, the hero's object of desire in The Great Gatsby. -
Darcy
Darcy, one of Dr. Meade's sons in Gone with the Wind
Also the surname of Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy, the male hero in Pride and Prejudice -
Desdemona
Desdemona, moon of Uranus, is as Shakespearean as a name can be, the beautiful and innocent wife of Othello. Jeffrey Eugenides also used the name for a character in his novel Middlesex. -
Dorian
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is a story of a narcissistic character who retains his youthful good looks while his portrait in the attic ages grotesquely. -
Edmund
Literary Edmunds appear in King Lear, Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, and Dickens's Little Dorrit. -
Edward
Edward Hyde, Dr Jekyll's alter ego in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Edward Fairfax Rochester, the Byronic hero of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.
Edward Cullen, from the Twilight series books and films. -
Emma
There are several Emma heroines, from Bovary to Goldman to Jane Austen. -
Fitzwilliam
The Christian name of the dashing Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (it was his mother's maiden name). -
Fleur
John Galsworthy bestowed it on one of the Forsytes in his celebrated saga. There was also Fleur Delacour, a French witch and the Beauxbatons champion for the Triwizard Tournament in Harry Potter. -
Gulliver
Gulliver's Travels is a classic book by Jonathan Swift. -
Heathcliff
Main character in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. -
Hermione
Hermione Jean Granger is a character in the Harry Potter series. Also in ancient Greek myth, Hermione is the daughter of Spartan King Menelaus and his wife Helen; the name also appears in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and in Walter Scott's novel The Fortunes of Nigel. -
Hieronymous
Hieronymous "Harry" Bosch in Michael Connelly series. -
Holden
Holden Caulfield, mixed-up teenage hero of J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. -
Huckleberry
Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, from the Mark Twain novels of the late 1800s. -
Isolde
Lovers Tristan and Isolde are taken from the Arthurian legend. -
Jarvis
Jarvis Lorry is a character in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities.
Jarvis in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. -
Jolyn
Jolyon Wagg, character from the The Adventures of Tintin comics by Hergé
Galsworthy used this for The Forsyte Saga. -
Jude
Thomas Hardy's tragic Jude the Obscure. -
Juliet
In Shakespeare's play, it was Juliet who said "What's in a name?" Juliet is also featured in the horror story The Transformation by Mary Shelley. -
Jupiter
Jupiter is a character in Amphitryon by Moliere. -
Lolita
Lolita, a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, is named after its main female character. -
Magnus
Magnus has made appearances as a vampire in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and as a character in Roald Dahl's Matilda. Also in Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers. -
Maisie
Maisie is the name of the precocious young title character in the Henry James novel What Maisie Knew, and is also the main female character in Rudyard Kipling's The Light That Failed. Maisie is a half-blood character in the Harry Potter series. -
Marius
Marius Pontmercy is a character in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. Marius de Romanus is Armand and Pandora's creator in the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. -
Mercy
Mercy Lewis, in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, was based on a real-life person, a witness at the Salem witch trials. -
Milo
Milo Minderbinder, character in Joseph Heller's Catch-22. -
Orlando
Appears in Virginia Woolf's enigmatic eponymous novel and Shakespeare's As You Like It. -
Phineas
Phineas Fletcher, Quaker friend to Simeon Halliday in Uncle Tom's Cabin
. Anthony Trollope combined name and nickname for the young, handsome and charming Irish lawyer hero of his novel, Phineas Finn. -
Rain
In The Sandcastle, by Iris Murdoch, Rain Carter is a shy and naive young painter whose arrival sets the plot in motion in the third of Murdoch's many novels. -
Rhett
Rhett Butler, from Gone with The Wind. -
Rodion
Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is the protagonist of Crime and Punishment by Feodor Dostoyevsky. -
Romeo
Romeo Montague from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. -
Sampson
Sampson Brass is a character in the Dickens novel The Old Curiosity Shop. -
Santiago
Santiago has been featured in several works of fiction: it was the main character's name in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Paolo Coehlo's The Alchemist. There was also a Santiago in Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire. -
Sapphira
In Sapphira and the Slave Girl, by Willa Cather, Sapphira Doddridge Colbert is a proud patrician Southerner in the years before the Civil War. -
Scarlett
Scarlett O'Hara is the main character in Gone With The Wind. -
Scout
Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, daughter of Atticus Finch and protagonist of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. -
Sebastian
As the name of memorable characters in such varied works as Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and The Tempest and Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. -
Septimus
There was a Septimus in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, in Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and in Trollope's Barchester novels. Probably it is most familiar to modern readers as Harry Potter wizard Septimus Weasley. -
Silas
Silas is associated with the indelible albino monk in The Da Vinci Code, and is also the leading character in William D. Howell's novel The Rise and Fall of Silas Lapham. -
Thomasin
The Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy, Thomasin Yeobright - also called Tamsin - is portrayed as a gentle and sensitive, wholesome, serene and sympathetic symbol of renewal and life. -
Tristram
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
The protagonist of the Anthony Burgess novel The Wanting Seed is Tristram Foxe. -
Vivaldo
Vivaldo Moore, novelist in James Baldwin's Another Country. -
Viviette
Lady Viviette Constantine (née Glanville) is a character in Thomas Hardy's Two on a Tower. -
Wolf
Hero of Jack London's 1904 novel The Sea-Wolf is Wolf Larsen. -
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Looking for baby name inspiration? Check out our baby name finder, or see our lists by nation or theme.
While in the park with my son last week, I heard one of the other mothers calling out to her little girl, whose name I learnt was Octavia. Octavia! What a great name! It sounded familiar yet I couldn't work out where I'd heard it before.
Thanks to Google, I discovered that Octavia is a character from one of William Shakespeare's plays, Antony and Cleopatra. No wonder I was having high school English flashbacks.
It had me wondering what other hidden gems exist within Shakespeare's numerous works, so I compiled this list. If you're looking for a literary name for your baby but aren't really a fan of the trendy Harper or Atticus (both inspired by the novel To kill a Mockingbird), why not take some inspiration from the Bard …
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Girls: Helena, Titania
Boys: Lysander, Robin
Antony and Cleopatra
Girls: Alexas, Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras, Octavia
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Boys: Antony, Demetrius, Taurus
As You Like It
Girls: Audrey, Celia, Phebe, Rosalind
Boys: Charles, Jaques, Oliver, Orlando
Hamlet
Girls: Ophelia
Boys: Marcellus
King Lear
Girls: Cordelia, Regan
Boys: Edmund, Oswald
Macbeth
Boys: Angus, Lennox, Malcolm
Measure for Measure
Girls: Isabella, Mariana,
Boys: Claudio, Lucio
Much Ado about Nothing
Girls: Beatrice, Hero, Ursula
Boys: Francis, Leonato
Othello
Girls: Bianca, Desdemona, Emilia
Boys: Cassio
Romeo and Juliet
Girls: Juliet, Rosaline
Boys: Laurence, Paris, Romeo, Sampson
The Merchant of Venice
Girls: Jessica, Nerissa, Portia
Boys: Leonardo, Lorenzo
The Taming of the Shrew
Girls: Katherina/Katherine (Kate)
Boys: Curtis, Nathaniel
The Tempest
Girls: Ariel, Iris, Miranda
Boys: Alonso
The Winter's Tale
Girls: Hermione, Paulina
Boys: Camillo, Dion
Titus Andronicus
Girls: Lavinia, Tamora
Boys: Aaron, Lucius, Marcus, Quintus, Titus
Twelfth Night
Girls: Olivia, Viola
Boys: Sebastian, Toby, Valentine
Two Gentleman of Verona
Girls: Julia, Lucetta, Silvia
Boys: Antonio