Literary Names
Names from the bookshelf — the characters who outlived their authors, and a few authors who became first names themselves. A literary name comes pre-loaded with a story your child will one day get to read.
| Save name | Name & connection | History 1926–2025, yearly counts; individually scaled | Babies 2025 · rank | 5-year rank movement | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Wonderland's fearless faller. | 3,547#65 | Up 11 rank positions in five years | 1921 | ||
Brontë's steel-spined governess. | 1,380#221 | Up 43 rank positions in five years | 1947 | ||
Of Green Gables — red-haired and unstoppable. | 472#619 | Up 7 rank positions in five years | 1959 | ||
Made famous by Peter Pan's Wendy Darling. | 165#1,347 | Down 159 rank positions in five years | 1967 | ||
Plath, poet of Ariel. | 1,017#300 | Up 202 rank positions in five years | 1937 | ||
From Harper Lee, Mockingbird's author. | 6,792#16 | Down 6 rank positions in five years | 2016 | ||
Gone with the Wind's unsinkable heroine. | 5,644#32 | Down 11 rank positions in five years | 2017 | ||
The Romantic poet-lord. | 233#981 | Down 191 rank positions in five years | 1964 | ||
Kay Thompson's Plaza Hotel terror. | 4,251#49 | Up 88 rank positions in five years | 2025 | ||
Twain's fence-painting schemer. | 2,941#122 | Down 6 rank positions in five years | 2015 | ||
The poet who toured all three afterlives. | 1,104#308 | Down 7 rank positions in five years | 1998 | ||
Verona's balcony half. | 1,136#274 | Up 32 rank positions in five years | 2016 | ||
The girl who saved Wilbur in Charlotte's Web. | 186#1,220 | Up 345 rank positions in five years | 1918 | ||
Dahl's telekinetic bookworm. | 838#365 | Up 113 rank positions in five years | 2025 | ||
Gone with the Wind's blockade-runner. | 1,936#188 | Down 29 rank positions in five years | 2021 | ||
The Concord essayist's surname. | 2,241#122 | Up 33 rank positions in five years | 2025 | ||
Cather, chronicler of the prairie. | 742#422 | Down 72 rank positions in five years | 2019 | ||
The Catcher in the Rye's wary narrator. | 1,140#297 | Down 70 rank positions in five years | 2018 | ||
As You Like It's wit in disguise. | 140#1,521 | Down 90 rank positions in five years | 1965 | ||
Verona's other half. | 1,129#302 | Up 76 rank positions in five years | 2024 | ||
Hamlet's flower-strewn tragedy. | 1,183#264 | Up 127 rank positions in five years | 2024 | ||
Wilde's portrait-hiding beauty. | 557#539 | Down 27 rank positions in five years | 2008 | ||
Pride and Prejudice's proud hero, surname-first. | 316#857 | Up 334 rank positions in five years | 1970 | ||
To Kill a Mockingbird's upright father. | 1,208#281 | Up 18 rank positions in five years | 2021 | ||
Lear's honest daughter. | 258#981 | Up 25 rank positions in five years | 2015 | ||
Zora Neale Hurston, Harlem Renaissance novelist. | 264#969 | Down 94 rank positions in five years | 2019 | ||
Hughes, poet of Harlem. | 227#1,000 | Down 306 rank positions in five years | 2016 | ||
Moby-Dick's 'Call me Ishmael.' | 121#1,469 | Down 197 rank positions in five years | 2017 | ||
Mockingbird's narrator — six years old, watching everything. | 254#997 | Down 125 rank positions in five years | 2022 | ||
Narnia's seafaring king. | 614#491 | Up 269 rank positions in five years | 2025 | ||
Potter, painter of rabbits. | 162#1,360 | Down 194 rank positions in five years | 2019 | ||
Hogwarts' brightest witch — and a Winter's Tale queen. | 95#2,008 | Up 2 rank positions in five years | 2024 | ||
Jane's surname, worn as a first. | 44#3,468 | Down 283 rank positions in five years | 2016 |
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Sources & methodology
Meaning summaries use Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0) and referenced name histories. Each name’s detail page includes its sources.
Membership on this list is editorial — we chose names that genuinely fit the theme. Every number is from official birth data: "—" means the name had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, which makes it a genuinely rare pick today, not an invalid one. The dot marks whether the stats shown are for the girls' or boys' use of the name.