I would like to ask you today about your favorite non-family honor names. Like, not your grandmother’s name, but the names of authors, astronauts, scientists, historical figures, etc., if they are names you would consider using for a child. I thought of this after watching the Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary and wishing we’d given Elizabeth the middle name Ruth (it ALSO happens to be a family name, which would have made it even better).
The first one that springs to mind for me is Jonas. It actually is a family name for me because it was my uncle’s middle name, but he was named after Jonas Salk, the man who developed the polio vaccine. Plus I think it’s a great name by its own merits.
The first African American graduate of my college was Otelia Cromwell, and I’ve definitely considered either Otelia or Ottilie as a tribute to her.
Go Smith!!! :)
My 9 month old niece’s middle name is Valentine (Agatha Valentine) after the Valentine character in the book Ender’s Game. My bro-in-law said they met another little girl with the same middle name at the park recently, and she got her name from the same place. Maybe a generational thing?
I have an Agatha (Agatha Rowan) and I am delighted when I hear it being used on more babies. Everyone assumes it is an honor name, but it’s just a name we liked.
We did the same thing with one of our girls!
My husband said “no literary names” for our first because….reasons? He came to his senses for subsequent children, but I snuck Elizabeth for Elizabeth Bennet in as my first daughter’s middle, hidden in plain sight since it’s such a common middle name 😏. Our 2nd is Beatrix for Beatrix Potter/Trixie Belden/Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing.
We had so many others on our list I hope we get to use some day:
Emmeline (Pankhurst)
Ruth/Ruthie (Notorious RBG)
Sylvia (Pankhurst)
Josephine (Baker)
Frida (Kahlo)
Merricat (from We Have Always Lived in the Castle–probably as a middle name)
Calvin (& Hobbes)
(Spoiler Alert) Merricat is a cute name, but I wouldn’t like to name a daughter after a girl who poisoned her whole family:)
I have a Beatrice for Beatrice from Much Ado, and her brother’s name is Peter and yes that is 100% a Beatrix Potter nod.
We were between middle names that honored family or middle names that honored historical figures we admired. I work in social justice and liked the idea of using names of historical women and men who stood up for justice.
Ultimately, the family names won out, partly because our first daughter is adopted and her original middle name just happened to be a legacy name in my husband’s family.
Here are some names we had considered:
Ida or Ida Bell – for journalist Ida B. Wells
Sojourn or Sojourner – for Sojourner Truth
Corrie – for Corrie Ten Boom
William – for William Wilberforce
Martin or Luther – for Martin Luther King Jr.
Frederick – for Frederick Douglass
These are great names – such a wonderful collection of truly heroic people!
I’m sure I’m forgetting some obvious ones but these are the ones that immediately spring to my mind:
Ruth (for RBG )
Amelia (Earhart)
Anne (Shirley – from Anne of Green Gables)
Miles (Davis)
Thelonious (Monk) (nickname Theo)
Errol (Garner)
(Bill) Evans
Duke or Ellington
Ella (Fitzgerald)
Pearl (Bailey)
My son’s middle name is Thelonious. Still makes me smile.
Next baby will have the middle Fitzgerald (boy) or Simone (girl) after Nina Simone.
Oh Swistle. This post fills me with complete & utter despair. My husband and I have been together since high school (10+ years), and in some early conversation he mentioned he loved the name Ruth. I hated it at first (what an old lady name!), but then it grew on me and when I went to law school and read opinions by RBG (who was not yet popularly famous), that sealed the deal. I loved the idea of a nod to her, and our future child has been “Ruth” in our household for YEARS. We are probably a few years out from kids still, but now that RBG is notorious & gaining in popularity, combined with the fact that I’m now actually a lawyer, I’m afraid the name will be too popular/the connection too obvious. And I think you just proved me right?! I’ll just be over here sighing dramatically.
Across 3 daycares, I have yet to meet a Ruth. IMO, not too popular.
I wouldn’t ever say Ruth is “too popular.”
I have worked in childcare for a decade and have 10 nieces/nephews ranging in ages 9 months to 22 years old– none of them have ever met a Ruth in school, daycare, playground, etc. In my life, I have only known two Ruth (one five years older and one four years younger– both of them have the most beautiful and powerful spirits. I would say: go for it.
I think Ruth is more common as a middle and you won’t find a ton of kids with it as their first. According to the SSA database, it has not been in the top 10 girls’ names since 1929 and not in the top 100 since 1961. It’s risen in popularity recently but only to #265 in 2017, on par with Hope, Gemma, Gabrielle, Lucille, Thea, Giselle, and Melissa. I don’t think of those names as being overdone (and am not sure I even buy into the idea of a name being overdone; while mine is less common, my spouse and siblings have names that were top-10 in their birth years and it hasn’t been a problem) so Ruth shouldn’t be either.
We named our little girl after RBG! And actually have heard of a few others babies recently being named Ruth in her honor. So I do think it is gaining in popularity.
Some other commenters have addressed the popularity but regardless, I think the honor and loveliness of the name vastly outweighs the (possible) popularity and/or obvious connection.
My daughter is five and her name is Ruth. I named her after my grandmother, but I love the RBG connection. I think if you love it, you should use it. It was only a matter of time before Ruth came back in to style, and I find that now that it’s my actual kid’s name, I don’t care if it gets popular. I named her Ruth for a reason! It’s a great name. ;-)
As a Catholic, my list could be endless!! (I myself was named explicitly after a saint.) I really want to name a daughter Edith after St. Edith Stein, a great Polish/German philosopher who was killed during the Holocaust. There are many other saints I like who I’d consider honoring in this way but she is the one I admire most and would most want to name a child after.
In the topic of saints’ names: here in Poland the name Faustyna (Eng. Faustina) seems like a quite popular choice for a middle name in recent years – I’ve stumbled across it a few times. (Apparently after blessed Faustyna Kowalska: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faustina_Kowalska). Kinga is also very common (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinga_of_Poland), also as a first name.
St. Faustina is wonderful!
Ah yes, the endless list of Catholic Saints list LOL! It was important to us to have a saint name somewhere in each child’s name! We’re using Francis as a middle name for our upcoming little boy, but we considered Colby after St. Maximillian Kolbe also.
Also, LOVE Edith Stein. She is so inspirational!
Maximilian Kolbe is one of my very favorites, too!!
Both my daughters have literary middle names: Harper (Harper Lee) and Finley (Timothy Findlay).
My oldest is named Lucille for Lucille Ball and the happiness and laughter she has brought to millions. My second is named Lennon for John Lennon and his messages of peace and love that he spread.
This sent me into an obsession with finding other people worth honoring for baby #3. We named him Truman after Truman Capote, which also happens to be a family name for my husband. Other names discussed were:
Booker (T. Washington)
Cassius (Clay)
Darwin (Charles)
Franklin (FDR)
Orwell (George)
Coretta (Scott King)
Frida (Kahlo)
Florence (Nightingale)
Melba (Nellie)
Isadora (Duncan)
Ruth (GB)
I also have a Lennon, named after John Lennon!
My husband is Dylan after Bob Dylan. It’s a family tradition being named after musicians.
My nephew’s middle name is Gehrig. Baseball is a pretty big deal in our fam.
I have a son named Larkin and a daughter named Maris. Baseball :)
Here are some girls names with cool namesakes that I like (and weren’t already mentioned):
Anna (it’s hard to list only one namesake: so many saints, princesses… also singer Anna German)
Daria (saint’s name)
Ada (Lovelace)
Emilia (Plater) (Polish-Lithuanian 19th century freedom fighter)
Miranda (from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, and also a character from “Picnic at Hanging Rock”)
Ariadne (mythical Greek princess)
Eleanor (Roosevelt, also countless queens and princesses throughout history)
Audrey (Hepburn)
Margot (Fonteyn)
Virginia (Woolf)
Salomea (Maria Skłodowska-Curie’s middle name)
Violet (Baudelaire)
Kira (Gałczyńska) (Polish writer and journalist)
Olga (Boznańska) (Polish painter)
Helena (form Homer’s “Iliad”)
Jane (Austen)
Jeanne (d’Arc)*
*Although I was actually named after my late grandma, I always liked the fact of having Joan of Arc (Polish: Joanna d’Arc) as namesake – such a great and strong female character with fascinating history!
There are a ton of Saint Names that might be considered honor names. We named our first daughter Magdalene after Mary and our second daughter Pauline after the first African American woman to be ordained in the Episcopal Church (she was later sainted in TEC).
I love Ruth as an honor name, but what would Ginsberg look like for a boys middle name? I’d love to see more boys getting honor names from amazing women!
This! Boys being given honour names of awesome women!
I love the idea of Galilea for Galileo. There are also so many names from mythology, book characters, and actor names I would be into using. Another on my mind is Alden, which is the name of the street that most directly leads between the house where I grew up and the house where my husband grew up :)
Love that Street name, that is so cool! My partner and I met in a pub in London (the royal George on Charing Cross Road). The first place we lived together was on Devereux Road so I always had Charing and Devereux on our list.
Rosalind for Rosalind Franklin! I heard Linnea, for Carl Linnaeus, somewhere, and I was a bit taken. Darwin would be a cool middle name, maybe. Anything Ada Lovelace. I love Coretta for Coretta Scott King. Hypatia is a little out there for me personally, but that is one rocking woman.
I like Auden (for W.H. Auden) a lot, too, particularly as a gender non-binary name.
I don’t think about this nearly as much for future male progeny, but maybe Pascal, for the mathematician? I think it would be interesting to ponder why I wouldn’t give a boy a bada** scientist name…
My second daughter is Rosalind as a nod to the scientist Rosalind Franklin 😃
I have a Drew – name inspired by an NFL quarterback
I like the name Hilary – in honor of Hilary Knight, one of the greatest women’s hockey players to ever play the game. She was part of the 2017 leadership that fought their governing body (USA Hockey) for equitable pay, and they won. They had threatened to boycott the World Championships that year if they didn’t get a fair deal. Hilary was the face of the fight, and she then scored the over time game winning goal in the gold medal game. Then, a year later after they won at the Olympics and all the players went to the White House, she skipped it, posted about equality on her IG, and went and visited her grandma instead.
LOL our dog is named Virginia because she came to us at Christmas, and restored our faith in seemingly impossible things, just like the Virginia who asked if there was really a Santa Claus. I always suggest it when people are looking for a holiday name that isn’t quite so obvious.
I’ve always liked Sojourner Truth, but don’t think I could go the Sojourner route — maybe True?
One of our daughters has the virtue name Truth. It’s only one letter off from Ruth. Our daughter’s other middle name is Beatrice. Beatrice contains the possible meaning of Pilgrim = Sojourner. So a Beatrice Truth is sort of a nod to Sojourner Truth.
We gave our oldest son the middle name, Penn, as a nod to where we were living temporarily for my husband’s postdoc during the pregnancy and first year of his life. We joke that he’s our Pennsylvania souvenir.
Well. Every one of my children has a literary name, paired with a (more) common name.
Arwen Elizabeth (Lord of the Rings);
Branwen Elanor (Branwen is from several books, plus Elanor is spelled like a flower in LOTR);
Miriel Margaret (LOTR appendices: the last ruling queen);
Brandon Ransom (Elwin Ransom is the main protagonist of C.S. Lewis’s Space trilogy);
Tirienne Anne ( a feminization of Tirian, last king of Narnia); and
Kelson Reuel ( Kelson from Katherine Kurtz’s Deryini books, and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.)
We left family names strictly alone, for ultra repetitive family reasons…
Washington (first president)
Reagan (Ronald)
Walter (Disney)
Laurent (Laurent Clerc… Helped establish ASL in US)
Hopkins (John)
Key (Francis Scott Key)
Carnegie (Andrew)
Florence (Nightingale)
Seacole (Mary Jane)
Will (Rogers)
I forgot Neil (Armstrong)!
Blythe for Anne of Green Gables boy or girl
Sibylla for Maria Sibylla Marian the naturalist painter and for the Queen of Jerusalem
I now either need a new baby or two new cats.
This reminds me of another one I would loooove to use: Gilbert!!
My husband pushed for fictional character honor names like Leia (star wars) , Arwen (Lord of the Rings) , and Cordelia (The Vorkosigan Saga) but I couldn’t quite get on board.
I wanted Margaret (so many authors! so many nicknames!), Charlotte (Bronte), Georgette (Heyer), Agatha (Christie), Ada (Lovelace).
I would have loved to name a girl Ruth after both my Grandma and RBG, but my Grandma Ruth is still living (she’s 100!), and I’m Jewish and we don’t do that.
My husband hated all the girls names I came up with and wanted Andromeda and I wasn’t in favor of that either. I think he would have come around on Ada.
Thank goodness we only had the one kid and he’s a boy.
That’s interesting. I’m not Jewish (my parents are from different religions: mom’s side of the family is Catholic, and dad’s side is Lutheran), but naming a child after a living relative is an absolute NO in both sides of my family. What’s more, among all the people I know I actually can think only about maybe two cases when child shares a name with a close relative (and both of them are quite young). So I’m wondering, maybe it’s more of a cultural tradition rather than religious one? (There’s also a possibility that geography has something to do with it: before the 2nd WW there used to be a huge Jewish diaspora living in Poland, and maybe their beliefs at some point influenced folks from other religions?)
Oh yes we considered Agatha! But we’re having a boy. The UK town we live in is very heavily associated with Christie, it’s supposedly where she got the inspiration for one of her most iconic characters.
I love Ada too. Sadly we are done having kids and we just had boys.
I am a high school student so obviously I am not going to have kids anytime soon but this topic reminds me of something I’ve been pondering over. One of my favorite girl names, one that would be a strong contender were I to have a daughter sometime in the distant future, is the name of a good friend from when I was little who I have sadly been out of touch with for a while. It’s not an unusual name, and it has plenty of other associations with a couple of historical figures and some literary characters and such, so it’s not like if I used the name it would be only “after this friend”, but they are the primary association for me.
The issue is that I heard, after we fell out of touch, that this friend came out as transgender and goes by a different, clearly masculine name (that doesn’t really appeal to my tastes, but I can see why they chose it and it’s a good fit for them). Do you folks think it would be offensive or too weird to use a “deadname” as an honor name, or would it be an interesting way to let the name live on? For as long as I knew them, they went by this girls’ name, but clearly they don’t identify with it anymore and I get that old names can be a sensitive topic. Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with a situation like this? Obviously this is not something urgent, but what do you think?
Oh that’s an interesting question.
For me, I think it would depend a lot on just how long you’ve been out of touch with the friend, and whether others might think you were naming your kid after the friend.
If there was any chance of the latter, or if there was any likelihood of your friend finding out about your baby’s name, then I think it would be good to reach out to your friend or at least make a very obvious effort to do so.
If it’s a reasonably common name, and/or there’s someone else in your life that you can say that you’re naming the baby after, then it might be a lot easier than that.
Very complicated! Deadnaming someone is an awful thing to do, but this certainly isn’t exactly that. I feel for you.
This is such a caring and loving comment!
I don’t have advice about this.
Hmmmm- given the length of non-communication between you would it be fair to reframe the common-with-many-other-associations name as just coincidentally the name of your old friend rather than a true “honor name”? It’s ok to love the name, use the name, and say “and I once had a dear friend by the same name” without saying “you were named specifically for this person with whom I have a complicated history and themselves has a complicated history with this name”.
Sometimes…it’s just a name.
I doubt it’ll be a problem It’s not like you aren’t acknowledging your friend’s real gender or right name, just appreciating his parents’ taste in girl names.
I was charmed by the name of one of my friendlier classmates when I was in elementary school and 25 years later I gave it to my first. I doubt Keri would even realize that in some small part my son is named for her. Kerry is also my husband’s middle name. You never know where you’ll be when it’s time to name your own little girl. Maybe you’ll run across someone else with the name who complete spoils it for you. That happened to me, too, with another classmate’s name.. Maybe you’ll run across someone else with the name who reinforces your love of it.
Coretta (Scott King), Ramona (Quimby), Harriet (the spy), and Marilla (Cuthbert) were all on my list. Of course we are having a boy.
I have an Emeline named after Emmeline B Wells (she was amazing!) and a Harriet named after Harriet Tubman.
I have always had such a soft spot for the name Gilbert (Gilbert Blythe from Anne of Green Gables).
I have a great fondness for the name Verity, as I enjoy the meaning, and it is used in my favorite book of all time (To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis).
I would love to honor Anne Frank with the name Annelies, but I wonder if Anne Frank as a namesake would be putting an emotional burden in a child?
I would find this hard! My daughter is very sensitive (read worry-wart) and I know she would fret about this. I think the fact that she died in childhood is the deal breaker for me (considering that many honourees have passed on).
I had the name Verity on my list for our second child. But I already have a Kivrin and I didn’t want to go too theme-y. And he turned out to be a boy, anyway.
I managed to use Power Rangers cast names for all three of my kids and my husband has NO IDEA and it still makes me laugh to this day.
(he picked the first kid’s name before we’d even met, and I liked it fine, after much toing and froing I picked the second kid’s name from a longish list of ones he quite liked, and then the third kid’s name was completely my idea.)
What about Jacinda (Ardern)? I’ve met 2 little boys named Hendrix lately as well.
Yes! She would be a wonderful namesake. And Jacinda is actually a very nice name: has a familiar sound (Lucinda, Melinda), and gives you a cute nickname (Jacey/Jacie). But I’ve never heard it on anyone except the New Zealand PM – is it a popular name there?
No, not a popular name in New Zealand…. yet!
No, I did read a story when she named her daughter joking about how neither her parents or her husbands had easy names to spell. I think it is a re-spelling of Jacinta?
I would be very hesitant to name after a current politician – you never know what they might do in the future! (but I’m not from NZ).
My daughter’s middle name is Josephine, after Jo March from Little Women. And I’m currently pregnant with a boy (ahem is my request for help burning a hole in your pile Swistle? Because we’re still very much in need!) and I’ve raised Alden as a (possible middle name) option with my husband, in honour of Neil (Alden) Armstrong – he’s hugely into space, would have loved to have been a pilot or astronaut, and it’s the anniversary of Apollo 11 this year. Similarly, my husband is Californian and I really like Ansel after Ansel Adams. Husband has vetoed both though :(
And if this baby had been another girl I was keen to find a suffragette/suffragist honour name for her. Ida was our number one first name pick (Ida Wells) and we also seriously considered Sylvia, Edith and Inez.
For space names, what about
Edwin (Buzz Aldrin’s first name) Or what about Aldrin, since it seems you like A names?
Alek (Gegarin’s middle name)
Michael (Collins, the guy who DIDN’T land on the moon during Apollo 11)
My girls are Harper Lorelei (Harper Lee and Lorelei Gilmore) and Elinor Elizabeth (Elinor Dashwood and Elizabeth Bennet).
Names I always had listed but didn’t get to use because my husband is boring:
Sutton (Sutton Foster)
Charlotte (Charlotte the spider)
Scout (Scout Finch)
Agnes (David Copperfield)
Our boys are Caspian Isaiah, honoring CS Lewis and the prophet Isaiah, and Lane Eliot James, honoring my dad, t.s. Eliot and St James.
Other honor names we have considered are
John (Tolkien, the disciple whom Jesus loved, St John of the cross)
Athanasius
Benedict
Thomas (Aquinas)
Nehemiah (from the old Testament)
Simeon (from the temple when Jesus was presented)
Peter (St)
Abraham
(St) Genevieve
(Queen) Esther
Irene (St Irenaeus)
Rockwell (Norman)
I’m big on honor names and want to honor family and faith in my name selections — I love the saints (loved seeing Edith Stein mentioned above! I love her!), Marian names are a big favorite of mine (I even wrote a book on them!), I love a lot of Biblical names. Fortunately, there are saint/Marian/biblical names to fit all kinds of styles, and most family names can have a faith connection as well.
Some non-saints that I could see informing my choices might include literary names — Atticus Finch (especially before Go Set a Watchman), several of the Anne of Green Gables characters and Lucy Maud Montgomery, Flannery’s a favorite name of mine, there are a lot of characters and authors I’d consider (but not Game of Thrones characters! There are no guarantees that good characters will remain good!). My hubby was only half joking about naming our youngest after football players Carson Wentz and Nick Foles! I could see Lincoln, Fred Rogers, Phyllis Bowman …
And just a thought about naming after women — I have seven boys and my mom, grandmother, mother-in-law, my hubby’s great aunt, and my three sisters, as well as the Virgin Mary, are all represented among their names!
I’m interested in the diversity of Swistle’s readership. Spanning from RBG + Darwin to Lewis + saint names. Then there is Anne of GG, making everyone happy.
I used Shenandoah as my youngest’s middle name, after the National Park, where my husband and I enjoyed lots of hikes & camping.
Sorry, I know that animal names aren’t the same thing, but it’s starting to look like I won’t get to name any human babies–I’ve been saving the list since I was fourteen!!–so here you go. :-)
Our oldest cat–my daughter’s attachment cat, so genuinely a huge deal in our household–is Magdalene nn Maggie, after “The Magdalene Laundries” by Joni Mitchell / the actual Magdalene laundries / the conflation of Mary Magdalen with “the fallen women” in the Catholic church–my daughter was adopted as a teen and strongly identified with the concept of being disposed of, hurt, and misunderstood. Which is heartbreaking, of course, and I hope that she also identifies with the concept of healing, which is included in the Western understanding of the archetype..that part is a work in progress. <3
Our second cat's middle name is Calvin (first name Squid, nn Inky, which I think had been stuck in my head all the way from "East Village Inky") after the protagonist of Calvin and Hobbes, because he's a mischievous little turd and we adore him. Our youngest is Tippopotamus nn Tipper because we inherited him from my dad, who had named him Tipper, and I've always loved hippos–does that count?!
My baby name list also includes Imogen(e) nn Idgie, for Idgie in Fried Green Tomatoes; Abel for Abel Meeropol, the writer of "Strange Fruit;" Jiminy for Jiminy Cricket (goodness, I hope I wouldn't really have used that on a human person); Julien/Julian/Jolyon for my favorite character in one of the Anne Rice witch novels when I was in high school; the nn Jolly/Lolly/Jellybean, for my first baby doll; Bastian for Bastian in The Neverending Story; Elliot for Elliott from ET; and Clotilde, for the psychoanalyst Karen Horney, who challenged some of Freud's more irritatingly sexist writings–Clotilde was the name of Karen's mother, and I just liked the name better / it sounds better to the ear of our generation–although if we waited a generation or two, I'm sure that Karen would sound great!
We seriously considered Rene after Rene DesCartes for a 2nd boy’s middle name. (DH’s favorite philosopher and that boy has a master’s in philosophy, the nerd). But she’s a girl named after my mom and his favorite aunt, which is awesome too. The cat’s named Luna after a video game character and her predecessor was Galadriel from LOTR
We named our son Elias after Walter Elias Disney. :)
My son has two middle names, one an honor name for a relative and one for an historical figure. When I was choosing the latter, my list included several of the names already mentioned here (Booker, Lincoln, Ansel, and not Franklin but Delano for FDR). There were also some names I don’t think I’ve seen mentioned that mostly came from poets (and a singer): Arlo (Guthrie), Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), Ogden (Nash), Masefield (John), Whittier (John Greenleaf), and Sylvander (the name used by Robert Burns in his correspondence with a married woman). The list also included a few character names, including Horatio and Inigo. These names helped me go from someone who was bored with boys’ names to wishing I had enough sons to use them all.
My son, Raider, is named for my little brother, Cameron. Cam’s favorite football team is the Raiders. I’m talking super fan. It works.
My husband is a comics guy, and although we had very different reasons for choosing the names, he was thrilled to end up with Gwen (Stacy, from Spider-Man and now Spiderwoman) for our eldest and Robyn as a middle for our youngest. The G initial was for my late stepdad and honors my Welsh heritage; Robyn is for my grandfather Robert. Given that we honored my family so heavily, I was more than happy he has those connections.
The dog is Tarzan, because he is a tiger-brindle and the husband loves Edgar Rice Burroughs. I would’ve loved to use Laura (after Half-pint) but there’s a Lori in the family.
This was fun to read through!
One I didn’t see (but maybe missed) was Louisa (May Alcott) – I love it!
I’m a highschool teacher. I hope that, before I retire, I get to teach many Baraks, Michelles, Maxines, and Alexandrias. I’d throw in Nancy and Hillary but I think style is a disadvantage for those names.
I only have Jane after jane Goodall for an honor name not related to me or some family connection. I loved her growing up and watched all about her through documentaries, and continued to do school projects on her for a few years. She still is one of my heroes to me, and the work she has done and continues to do is amazing.