papercoffeecup's Personal Name List

Alternate transcription of Russian Юлия or Ukrainian/Belarusian Юлія (see Yuliya).

Anglicized form of Iorwerth.

Russian, Ukrainian and Armenian form of Eve.

Russian form of Katherine. This name was adopted by the German princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst in 1744 shortly before she married the future Russian emperor Peter III. She later overthrew her husband and ruled as empress, known as Catherine the Great in English.

From Chinese 雅 (yǎ) meaning "elegant, graceful, refined" combined with 玲 (líng) meaning "tinkling of jade". This name can be formed of other character combinations as well.

Means "hospitality" in Greek, a derivative of ξένος (xenos) meaning "foreigner, guest". This was the name of a 5th-century saint who is venerated in the Eastern Church.

From the Old Slavic name *Voldiměrŭ, derived from the elements volděti meaning "to rule" and měrŭ meaning "great, famous". The second element has also been associated with mirŭ meaning "peace, world".

This was the name of a 9th-century ruler of Bulgaria. It was also borne by an 11th-century grand prince of Kyiv, Vladimir the Great, who is venerated as a saint because of his efforts to Christianize his realm. Other notable bearers include the revolutionary and first leader of the Soviet state Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), the Russian author Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), and the Russian president and prime minister Vladimir Putin (1952-).

From an English surname that was derived from Old English fenn meaning "marsh, fen".

Anglicized form of Tighearnán.

Old Norse form of Steinar.

From the Old Norse name Steinarr, derived from the elements steinn "stone" and herr "army, warrior".

Alternate transcription of Russian/Bulgarian Сергей (see Sergey).

Means "star" in Welsh. This is a recently created Welsh name.

French form of Seraphina.

Derived from South Slavic sanjati meaning "to dream".

Means "companion in evening talk" in Arabic, from the root سمر (samara) meaning "to talk in the evening".

Form of Yeruslan used by Aleksandr Pushkin in his poem Ruslan and Ludmila (1820), which was loosely based on Russian and Tatar folktales of Yeruslan Lazarevich.

Means "rose" in Breton.

Russian form of Peter. A famous bearer was the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893).

Feminine form of Peter. This was also the name of an ancient city in the region that is now Jordan.

Russian, Czech, Bulgarian, Slovene, Macedonian and Belarusian form of Paul.

French feminine form of Nicholas, commonly used in the English-speaking world since the middle of the 20th century. A famous bearer is American-Australian actress Nicole Kidman (1967-).

From the Greek name Νικόλαος (Nikolaos) meaning "victory of the people", derived from Greek νίκη (nike) meaning "victory" and λαός (laos) meaning "people". Saint Nicholas was a 4th-century bishop from Anatolia who, according to legend, saved the daughters of a poor man from lives of prostitution. He is the patron saint of children, sailors and merchants, as well as Greece and Russia. He formed the basis for the figure known as Santa Claus (created in the 19th century from Dutch Sinterklaas), the bringer of Christmas presents.

Due to the renown of the saint, this name has been widely used in the Christian world. It has been common in England since the 12th century, though it became a bit less popular after the Protestant Reformation. The name has been borne by five popes and two tsars of Russia.

Latinate form of Natalia (see Natalie).

Feminine form of Marinus. This name was borne by a few early saints. This is also the name by which Saint Margaret of Antioch is known in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Form of Lucas (see Luke) in several languages.

Feminine form of Lucius. Saint Lucia was a 4th-century martyr from Syracuse. She was said to have had her eyes gouged out, and thus she is the patron saint of the blind. She was widely revered in the Middle Ages, and her name has been used throughout Christian Europe (in various spellings). It has been used in the England since the 12th century, usually in the spellings Lucy or Luce.

Form of Constantine in several languages.

German short form of Nicholas, now used independently.

Swedish short form of Katherine.

Icelandic and Faroese form of Iohanna (see Joanna).

Newer form of the Old Church Slavic name Іѡаннъ (Ioannŭ), which was derived from Greek Ioannes (see John). This was the name of six Russian rulers, including the 15th-century Ivan III the Great and 16th-century Ivan IV the Terrible, the first tsar of Russia. It was also borne by nine emperors of Bulgaria. Other notable bearers include the Russian author Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), who wrote Fathers and Sons, and the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), who is best known for his discovery of the conditioned reflex.

Russian form of the Old Norse name Yngvarr (see Ingvar). The Varangians brought it with them when they began settling in Eastern Europe in the 9th century. It was borne by two grand princes of Kyiv, notably Igor I the son of Rurik and the husband of Saint Olga. Other famous bearers include Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), a Russian composer known for The Rite of Spring, and Igor Sikorsky (1889-1972), the Russian-American designer of the first successful helicopter.

Latinate form of Helen. This is the name of the heroine of William Shakespeare's play All's Well That Ends Well (1603).

Means "falcon" in German.

From the Roman family name Aemilius, which was derived from Latin aemulus meaning "rival".

Means "elm tree" in Cornish. This is a recently coined Cornish name.

Scandinavian and Welsh form of Helen.

Form of Helen used in various languages, as well as an alternate transcription of Russian Елена (see Yelena).

Russian variant of Dmitriy, as well as the Georgian form.

French form of Clara. This was a common name in France throughout the 20th century, though it has since been eclipsed there by Clara. It was also very popular in the United Kingdom, especially in the 1970s.

Means "sky" in French. It is not used as a given name in France itself.

From a Scottish surname that was derived from Gaelic blàr meaning "plain, field, battlefield". In Scotland this name is typically masculine.

In the United States it became more common for girls in the early 1980s, shortly after the debut of the television sitcom The Facts of Life (1979-1988), which featured a character named Blair Warner. The name left the American top 1000 rankings two decades later, but was resurrected by another television character, this time Blair Waldorf from the series Gossip Girl (2007-2012).

Romanian and German form of Aurelius.

Derived from the Old German elements ansi "god" and ger "spear". Saint Ansgar was a 9th-century Frankish missionary who tried to convert the Danes and Norwegians.

Form of Anya in several languages.

Variant of Angélia.

Feminine form of Angelus (see Angel). As an English name, it came into use in the 18th century. A notable bearer is the former German chancellor Angela Merkel (1954-).

Polish, Czech, Bulgarian and Macedonian diminutive of Anna.

French form of Anastasia (feminine) and Romanian form of Anastasius (masculine).

Feminine form of Anastasius. This was the name of a 4th-century Dalmatian saint who was martyred during the persecutions of the Roman emperor Diocletian. Due to her, the name has been common in Eastern Orthodox Christianity (in various spellings). As an English name it has been in use since the Middle Ages. A famous bearer was the youngest daughter of the last Russian tsar Nicholas II, who was rumoured to have escaped the execution of her family in 1918.

Meaning uncertain, possibly a derivative of Anne 1 or Agnès. It was used in Jean-Henri Guy's opera Anacréon chez Polycrate (1798), where it is borne by the daughter (otherwise unnamed in history) of the 6th-century BC tyrant Polycrates of Samos. Guy could have adapted it from a classical name such as Anaitis or Athénaïs.

A famous bearer was the Cuban-French writer Anaïs Nin (1903-1977), known for her diaries.

German and Czech form of Aloysius.

Latinized form of the Greek name Ἀλέξανδρος (Alexandros), which meant "defending men" from Greek ἀλέξω (alexo) meaning "to defend, help" and ἀνήρ (aner) meaning "man" (genitive ἀνδρός). In Greek mythology this was another name of the hero Paris, and it also belongs to several characters in the New Testament. However, the most famous bearer was Alexander the Great, king of Macedon. In the 4th century BC he built a huge empire out of Greece, Egypt, Persia, and parts of India. Due to his fame, and later medieval tales involving him, use of his name spread throughout Europe.

The name has been used by kings of Scotland, Poland and Yugoslavia, emperors of Russia, and eight popes. Other notable bearers include English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), American statesman Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), Scottish-Canadian explorer Alexander MacKenzie (1764-1820), Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), and Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), the Scottish-Canadian-American inventor of the telephone.

Swedish variant of Agnes.

Feminine elaboration of Aaron using the popular name suffix lyn.