Forty-four names from literature, with the book that produced them

There are two kinds of literary name and they are worth separating. Some were invented or coined by a writer and did not exist before the book — Wendy, Vanessa, Lorna, Evangeline. Others already existed and were rescued from obscurity by a famous character — Olivia, Jessica, Hermione, Atticus. The first group has a birthday. The second group has a revival. Ranks below are the Office for National Statistics 2025 figures for England and Wales.

Name	Work and author	Coined or revived	Rank in England and Wales
Olivia	Twelfth Night, Shakespeare, c.1602	Revived; a rare medieval name before	1st
Jessica	The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare, c.1596	Probably reshaped from the biblical Iscah	139th
Miranda	The Tempest, Shakespeare, 1611	Coined from Latin, "worthy of admiration"	3,035th
Imogen	Cymbeline, Shakespeare, 1611	Almost certainly a printer's error for Innogen	69th
Cordelia	King Lear, Shakespeare, 1606	Revived from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Cordeilla	650th
Perdita	The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare, 1611	Coined from Latin, "the lost one"	4,201st
Juliet	Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, c.1595	Revived; an existing Italian diminutive	661st
Sebastian	Twelfth Night, Shakespeare	Revived; a Greek and Latin name	47th
Ophelia	Sannazaro's Arcadia, 1504, then Hamlet	Coined by Sannazaro, popularised by Shakespeare	81st
Stella	Astrophel and Stella, Philip Sidney, 1591	Coined from Latin for star	333rd
Pamela	Arcadia, Philip Sidney, 1590	Coined; popularised by Richardson's novel in 1740	2,605th
Myra	Fulke Greville, 1580s	Coined, probably as an anagram of Mary	463rd
Vanessa	Cadenus and Vanessa, Jonathan Swift, c.1713	Coined from Esther Vanhomrigh's name	719th
Oscar	Macpherson's Ossian poems, 1760s	Revived; taken up by Napoleon, hence the Swedish kings	8th
Fiona	Usually credited to Macpherson, 18th century	Coined; the attribution is disputed	1,362nd
Cedric	Ivanhoe, Walter Scott, 1819	Coined, probably by misreading the Saxon Cerdic	1,093rd
Rowena	Ivanhoe, Walter Scott, 1819	Revived from a semi-legendary name	3,035th
Evangeline	Evangeline, Longfellow, 1847	Coined from Greek for "good news"	346th
Lorna	Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore, 1869	Coined, probably from the Scottish title Lorne	2,605th
Thelma	Thelma, Marie Corelli, 1887	Coined; the Greek gloss "will" came later	2,605th
Mavis	The Sorrows of Satan, Marie Corelli, 1895	Coined from the dialect word for a song thrush	763rd
Dorian	The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde, 1890	Coined from the Greek Dorians	745th
Wendy	Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie, 1904	Popularised by Barrie; a handful of earlier uses are recorded	1,809th
Heathcliff	Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë, 1847	Coined as a surname-and-forename in one	5,137th
Rhett	Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936	Revived from a Southern surname	2,269th
Atticus	To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960	Revived; a Roman cognomen	379th
Scout	To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960	A nickname in the novel, now used as a name	2,440th
Holden	The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger, 1951	Revived from an English surname	1,897th
Marnie	Marnie, Winston Graham, 1961	Revived; a Scottish diminutive of Marina or Margaret	97th
Lyra	Northern Lights, Philip Pullman, 1995	Coined from the constellation	70th
Hermione	The Winter's Tale, then Harry Potter, 1997	Revived twice; originally Greek	1,133rd
Luna	Latin, revived by Harry Potter, 2003	Revived; the Roman moon goddess	59th
Darcy	Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, 1813	Revived from a Norman surname	140th
Emma	Emma, Jane Austen, 1815	Revived; a Germanic name already in use	85th
Rosalind	As You Like It, Shakespeare	Revived; Germanic, and older than the play	1,639th
Nerissa	The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare	Coined, probably from Greek nerēis	not ranked
Titania	A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare	Coined from Ovid's epithet for the Titans	not ranked
Jasper	Medieval English; revived by 19th-century fiction	Revived; ultimately Persian	63rd
Clarissa	Clarissa, Samuel Richardson, 1748	Revived from a Latinised Clarice	not ranked
Amelia	Amelia, Henry Fielding, 1751	Popularised, not coined; Germanic in origin	3rd
Ramona	Ramona, Helen Hunt Jackson, 1884	Popularised; a Spanish feminine of Ramón	1,584th
Bella	Twilight, Stephenie Meyer, 2005	Popularised; a short form of Isabella	91st
Ariel	The Tempest, and separately the Hebrew Bible	Two independent sources for one spelling	1,007th
Raya	A Disney film, 2021, rather than a book	Popularised by the screen; up 419 places in a decade	82nd

What the data actually shows

Books produce slow risers; screens produce fast ones

Lyra was coined in 1995 and now ranks 70th in England and Wales, having climbed 153 places in ten years — a steady three-decade ascent. Raya, from a 2021 film, has risen 419 places in a decade and was the fastest-climbing girls' name in Ireland in 2025, up 114 places in a single year. Both are literary in the loose sense. Only one of them is behaving like a fashion.

The Shakespeare names are the most durable of all

Olivia is the most popular girls' name in England and Wales and has been for years. Sebastian is 47th, Imogen 69th, Ophelia 81st and Jessica 139th. Four centuries after the plays, these names are not period costume; they are simply names. That is what four hundred years of continuous use buys, and it is the strongest argument for choosing an old literary name over a new one.

A coined name carries its author with it

Wendy is still Peter Pan, Lorna is still Lorna Doone, and Heathcliff is still, unavoidably, Heathcliff. Names that existed before their famous bearer — Emma, Darcy, Jasper, Atticus — wear the association more lightly, because the name was never the character's property in the first place.

How to use this list

Ask how well the character ages. Atticus Finch reads differently now than in 1960, and Dorian Gray was never a role model. A literary name commits your child to a story you did not write and cannot revise, and the more famous the character, the more of that story comes along.

Check the coinage before you trust the meaning. Thelma is usually given a Greek origin meaning "will", but the name was almost certainly invented by a novelist first and explained afterwards. The same is true of Fiona, Lorna and Wendy: the etymology followed the book, rather than the other way around.

Finally, remember the spelling rule that governs every official ranking on this site. Darcy and D'Arcy, Lyra and Lira, Marnie and Marni are counted as separate names in the ONS, NRS, CSO and SSA tables, so any literary name looks rarer in the data than it sounds in a room.

Literary Baby Names and the Books Behind Them