Names Categorized "character actors"

Beulah f Biblical, English
Means "married" in Hebrew. The name is used in the Old Testament to refer to the land of Israel (Isaiah 62:4). As an English given name, Beulah has been used since the Protestant Reformation.

Clancy m & f English (Rare)
From an Irish surname (Anglicized from Mac Fhlannchaidh), derived from the given name Flannchadh meaning "red warrior".

Colmán m Irish, Old Irish
Diminutive of Colm (see Colum). This was the name of a large number of Irish saints.

Edie f English
Diminutive of Edith.

Emmet m English
Variant of Emmett. It is used in Ireland in honour of the nationalist and rebel Robert Emmet (1778-1803).

Fairuza f Arabic (Rare)
Variant of Fayruz.

Garret m English
From a surname that was a variant of Garrett.

Harvey m English
From the Breton given name Haerviu, which meant "battle worthy", from haer "battle" and viu "worthy". This was the name of a 6th-century Breton hermit who is the patron saint of the blind. Settlers from Brittany introduced it to England after the Norman Conquest. During the later Middle Ages it became rare, but it was revived in the 19th century.

Isiah m English
Variant of Isaiah.

Mare f Estonian, Slovene, Macedonian, Croatian
Diminutive of Maria and other names beginning with Mar.

Mildred f English
From the Old English name Mildþryð meaning "gentle strength", derived from the elements milde "gentle" and þryþ "strength". Saint Mildred was a 7th-century abbess, the daughter of the Kentish princess Saint Ermenburga. After the Norman Conquest this name became rare, but it was revived in the 19th century.

Natasha f Russian, Belarusian, English
Russian diminutive of Natalya. This is the name of a character in Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace (1865). It has been used in the English-speaking world only since the 20th century.

Penny f English
Diminutive of Penelope. It can also be given in reference to the copper coin (a British pound or an American dollar are worth 100 of them), derived from Old English penning.

Shelley f & m English
From an English surname that was originally derived from a place name meaning "clearing on a bank" in Old English. Two famous bearers of the surname were Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), a romantic poet whose works include Adonais and Ozymandias, and Mary Shelley (1797-1851), his wife, the author of the horror story Frankenstein. As a feminine given name, it came into general use after the 1940s.

Thelma f English
Meaning unknown. It was a rare name when British author Marie Corelli used it for the Norwegian heroine of her novel Thelma (1887). The name became popular around the end of the 19th century after the novel was published. It is sometimes claimed to derive from Greek θέλημα (thelema) meaning "will", though this seems unlikely.

Tilda f English, Swedish, Finnish
Short form of Matilda.

Walton m English
From a surname that was originally taken from various Old English place names meaning "stream town", "wood town", or "wall town".