Name Help is a series at Appellation Mountain. Every week, one reader’s name questions will be discussed.
We’re relying on thoughtful comments from the community to help expectant parents narrow down their name decisions. Thank you in advance for sharing your insight!
Daphne writes:
We inadvertently named our two children names that have loose connections to birds.
Minerva is the goddess of wisdom, often represented by an owl. Odette is the white swan in Swan Lake.
I’m expecting our third child. If it’s a boy there is a family name already on tap. If it’s a girl I’d like to continue with bird names. The only name I’ve found that I like is Meadowlark. I first heard of it when the basketball player died. (Note from Abby: what an amazing! name. Here’s a little more about the basketball player.) My husband thinks of it as a boy name and doesn’t really like it. He also thinks it’s too clunky. Besides it is a bird and not bird-related like the other names.
How do I even look up names that are connected to birds but not birds themselves? Tall order I know.
Thank you in advance.
Hi Daphne –
What a fun accidental theme! And you’ve chosen such great names for your daughters.
This one proved tough to research. And yet, all you need is a plausible connection to a bird, so that’s much more flexible than trying to choose an actual bird name.
So we need a name related to a bird, and it also has to:
- Seem generally familiar. The brown-capped rosy finch feels a little too obscure, even if some great names might connect to the bird. (To be clear, I didn’t find any.)
- Appeal to many. Owls and swans both claim positive associations.
- Pair well with Minerva and Odette.
- Rank low on the popularity charts. After all, Minevera and Odette qualify as relatively rare.
I’ll start with my best suggestions, but I know readers will have some great ideas, too.
Adelie – Names like Amelie and Elodie feel vaguely French but easily accessible in English. Adelie gives me pause because it’s easily misheard as Natalie. And yet it’s a gorgeous name! The Adelie penguin lives on the Antarctic coast. They’re named for Adelie Dumont d’Urville, wife of French explorer Jacques Dumont d’Urville, who first encountered the Adelie penguins. One other concern: Adelie and Odette share similar sounds.
Lina – I searched for books about birds, and stumbled on a 1955 Newberry Medal winner called The Wheel on the School. I’ve never read it, but there’s something intriguing about the plot. A group of children work to bring storks back to their village. Too obscure? Maybe, but Minerva, Odette and Lina match nicely. One other thought: Carolina, as in the Carolina Wren. Except that feels a little too literal!
Luscinia – Pliny the Elder used the word luscinia to refer to nightingales and their cousins way back in the first century AD. It remains part of the scientific name for nightingales to this day. No one is using Luscinia as a given name, and yet, it sounds like it should be one, right? It would shorten nicely to Lucy and Lou, and could fit right in with Olivia and Sophia and all of those ends with -ia names for girls.
Paloma – In Spanish, Paloma means dove. That tiptoes close to a literal bird name, something you’d like to avoid. And yet, it doesn’t feel like a literal bird name – unless your family speaks Spanish. It sounds like a sister name for Minerva and Odette. Plus, doves stands up well to swans and owls in terms of symbolism. Wisdom, grace, and peace.
Pavonine – Feline refers to cats, canine to dogs, and pavonine to peacocks. Like Luscinia, no one is using Pavonine as a given name. But there’s potential.
Philomela – There’s a gory story of things gone very wrong behind this pretty name. In Greek myth, Philomela suffers terribly, until the gods take pity and turn her into a nightingale.
Sephora – Visit any mall in America, and there’s almost certainly a Sephora selling make-up. Turns out that the name comes from the Hebrew Tzipporah – bird. No specific bird, just bird. That’s not exactly what you had in mind, which is okay, because I’m not sure if Sephora would wear well on a child today.
Sibyl – Do famous birds factor into your thinking? In Bell, Book, and Candle, Mrs. De Passe’s parrot answered to Sibyl. Again, this probably feels too obscure.
Overall, I think Paloma makes the strongest choice, with Luscinia and Adelie not far behind.
One last thought: I combed through lists of famous ornithologists, like this one at Ranker. But nothing really stood out. Any scientists out there? Or science educators? I feel like there might be something I’ve overlooked!
Let’s throw this open to everyone, because, readers, I know you’ll come up with some brilliant ideas. What are your favorite avian-inspired appellations?
Avice! Or Avis or Avicia or Avys or any of the variants.
The constellation, Lyra, is often represented as a bird with a lyre. Vega is one of the brightest stars in the constellation, and comes from an Arabic word meaning “falling eagle.” Fionnuala was transformed into a swan in Irish mythology. The Welsh legend of Rhiannon has a mystical bird element. Jena means small bird in Arabic.
I like Paloma the best with the sibset.
How about Calliope, which is Greek like Daphne and Minerva, and means beautiful voice? Or Halcyon, Neala (cloud)?
OH. I know exactly what I would do as an extreme bird lover and book lover. Phillip Pullman has an extraordinary set of characters in his His Dark Materials trilogy – witches (not traditional witches by any means) who shapeshift into birds. Their names are lovely – Seraphina Pekkala, Ruta Skadi, Reina Miti, and other Scandi-Slavic names. I would love the diversity of a Roman name, a French name, and a Northern European name. Other names from this world of witch-bird – Katya, Lena, Sara…
I think Minerva, Odette and Seraphina is pretty awesome. And since Seraphina is also related to angels/wings there’s sort of a subtle connection as well in case the literary one does not appeal. In fact any angelic name might work.
OOP Serafina is how the character is spelled. Wrote off the top of my head and surprised I got the others right 😉
I love Paloma and Philomela! Beautiful names that fit perfectly.
Halcyon/Alcyone is another Greek myth name related to birds (kingfisher). It’s a much less violent story than Philomela’s. Halcyon is also the name of the younger sister character in The Peacock Spring by Rumer Godden.
Sylvia is latin name for typical wablers and means “from the forest”
So this is a list of bird literary connections I made (all over of the spectrum of on-the-nose bird allusions to really stretching it…)
My first thought was Shakespeare because the bard is known for his extensive range of bird allusions:
Midsummer Night’s Dream is full of birds since it takes place in an enchanted forest. (Hippolyta, Hermia, Helena)
Much Ado About Nothing (Beatrice is compared to an untamed hawk–she’s feisty)
Juliet (there’s a pretty section about a lark and nightingale)
Portia (sings sweet as a lark)
Beautiful passage about the “gentle lark” in Cymbeline. Though Cymbeline is a male name in the play, I always thought it had potential as a quirky girls name. Another character is Imogen.
Rosaline (from Love’s Labour Lost–something about seeing her majesty with eyes of eagles)
Then I thought of Jane Eyre. Full of bird references along with the famous quotation “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will.” So Jane makes it clear she’s not a bird, she is bird related. Other Jane Eyre characters if Jane is too plain: Eliza, Georgiana, Bessie, Maria, Helen, Antoinetta, Adele, Alice, Blanche, Grace, Diana, Rosamund
Then I thought of Ode to a Nightingale. John and Keats aren’t great girls names but he refers to the “viewless wings of Poesy [poetic inspiration]” Posy or Josephine (nn Posy) could be cute. Ruth and Flora are from the poem itself. I also thought of Frances, the name of Keats’ inspirational love/fiance.
Finally, Emily Dickinson’s poem “hope is a thing with feathers.” Emily might be too common but you might find Hope more appealing.
I appreciate the difficulty of your situation; it’s hard to hit that sweet spot that Minerva and Odette do. But your daughters have wonderful names, so I’m sure you’ll pick something fantastic!
I was going to suggest Luscinia too. I believe the correct pronunciation is Lu-skin-eye-ah, but everyone will say loo-sin-eee-ah.
Well, there’s this (https://mamaslistofnames.wordpress.com/2017/03/21/the-ultimate-list-of-bird-baby-names/) blog post from a fairly new blog about bird-derived baby names, but it’s pretty literal and that doesn’t seem to be what you’re going for. (Also, unlike the author I would strongly caution against naming a child Albatross).
Maybe consider Lenore, from Poe’s The Raven
Tippi, the name of the actress who plays the heroine in Hitchcock’s The Birds
The heroine’s name is Melanie
Ava, meaning ‘like a bird’
Phoebe, apparently related to birds, I forget how
Leda, according to Greek myth Zeus came to seduce Leda in the form of a swan
Jemima, meaning ‘little dove’, also Jemima Puddleduck from Beatrix Potter stories
Alouette is French for Lark, and a well-known song on the piano
Edwidge, a variation on Hedwig
Jean Louise Finch, the name of Scout in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
Pheobe is a kind of bird. 🙂
You have lots of options from this post as well!
https://appellationmountain.net/fetching-names-bird-by-bird/
Paloma, Phoebe, Celandine, Laraline would all fit!