Medieval Names
Between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, Europe settled on the names it would use for a thousand years. Some never left (Arthur, Eleanor); some vanished and came back sounding brand new (Maud, Aveline); a few are pure Camelot.
| Save name | Name & connection | History 1926–2025, yearly counts; individually scaled | Babies 2025 · rank | 5-year rank movement | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A Norman-conquest staple: 'ruler of the army'. | 1,381#252 | Up 20 rank positions in five years | 1918 | ||
The once and future king. | 3,847#87 | Up 76 rank positions in five years | 1921 | ||
Eleanor of Aquitaine — queen of France, then of England. | 7,649#12 | Up 10 rank positions in five years | 1920 | ||
The Anglo-Saxon standard: 'prosperous in war'. | 595#499 | Down 27 rank positions in five years | 1918 | ||
Dante's guide through Paradise. | 583#508 | Up 44 rank positions in five years | 1921 | ||
The most popular girls' name of medieval England. | 246#1,016 | Up 231 rank positions in five years | 1918 | ||
A crusader-era virtue name. | 142#1,501 | Up 61 rank positions in five years | 1950 | ||
Isolde's knight. | 1,103#309 | Down 127 rank positions in five years | 2008 | ||
Charlemagne's paladin of the mountain pass. | 466#608 | Down 38 rank positions in five years | 1924 | ||
Hugh Capet, founder of France's longest dynasty. | 360#732 | Up 17 rank positions in five years | 1916 | ||
Chaucer's first name. | 31#3,598 | Down 897 rank positions in five years | 1975 | ||
The martyr-king of the East Angles. | 199#1,082 | Up 335 rank positions in five years | 1923 | ||
The last Visigothic king of Spain. | 93#1,752 | Down 132 rank positions in five years | 1971 | ||
Ivanhoe's father — Walter Scott's medieval coinage. | 209#1,051 | Down 82 rank positions in five years | 1982 | ||
A Holy Roman Emperor's name. | 770#417 | Up 134 rank positions in five years | 2025 | ||
The empress who fought Stephen for England's crown. | 838#365 | Up 113 rank positions in five years | 2025 | ||
Old German 'nobility' — a queen's name across Europe. | 1,062#289 | Down 17 rank positions in five years | 2016 | ||
The prophetess, as the Middle Ages spelled her. | 152#1,426 | Up 481 rank positions in five years | 1921 | ||
The medieval everyday form of Matilda. | —Unranked | — | 1886 | ||
Byzantium's empress, risen from the hippodrome. | 384#726 | Up 110 rank positions in five years | 2022 | ||
From Melisende, crusader queen of Jerusalem. | 103#1,900 | Up 42 rank positions in five years | 1927 | ||
The monk whose Rule organized a millennium. | 305#814 | Up 255 rank positions in five years | 2025 | ||
The medieval English form of Cecilia. | 137#1,541 | Up 54 rank positions in five years | 1989 | ||
The Norman pet form of Emma — Pankhurst revived it. | 284#922 | Down 58 rank positions in five years | 2017 | ||
Camelot's queen. | 295#899 | Up 112 rank positions in five years | 2022 | ||
The apostle every medieval fair was named for. | 39#3,092 | Up 1,344 rank positions in five years | 1969 | ||
The crusader who took Jerusalem and refused its crown. | 10#7,846 | Down 1,094 rank positions in five years | 1918 | ||
The visionary abbess-composer of Bingen. | 14#7,625 | Up 3,849 rank positions in five years | 1915 | ||
The Grail knight. | 113#1,536 | Up 1,183 rank positions in five years | 2025 | ||
The Norman name that became Evelyn. | 67#2,585 | Down 83 rank positions in five years | 2016 | ||
Camelot's greatest, most compromised knight. | 12#7,030 | Up 6,222 rank positions in five years | 1984 | ||
The leper king of Jerusalem. | —Unranked | — | 1965 | ||
The Irish princess of the great doomed romance. | 20#5,996 | Up 2,616 rank positions in five years | 2007 | ||
'Rose of the world' — Henry II's legendary mistress. | 15#7,426 | Up 898 rank positions in five years | 2017 | ||
The knight who kept his word with the Green Knight. | 5#12,654 | new | 1974 |
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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.