“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

- Juliet Capulet, Romeo and Juliet

At OOM, we love to celebrate fun and random days. Last week, Lauren wrote about Celebrate Your Name Week. Well, today is Unique Names Day, so I’m rounding up some of our favorite unique names in literature.

The Hunger Games is full of unique names: Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, Glimmer, Marvel, Clove, Cato and Thresh…just to name a few. Not to mention Katniss’s prep team: Cinna, Octavia, Flavius, and Venia.

Harry may be a common name, but the characters in Harry Potter certainly have unique names Hagrid, Sirus, Draco Malfoy, Belatrix and, of course, Voldemort!

Classic books have wonderfully unique names as well: Hester from The Scarlet Letter, Rhett from Gone with the Wind, Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights (years later, the world was introduced to another Heathcliff…Heathcliff Huxtable from The Cosby Show!), Huckleberry Finn, Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. One of my all-time favorite books is To Kill a Mockingbird, and who can forget Atticus or Scout?

Some other favorites: Blue from The Raven Boys by Maggie Steifvater, Gemma from Dark Life by Kat Falls, and Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Wizard of Oz introduced us to the name Glinda and in Gregory McGuire’s Wicked the wicked witch is named Elphaba. Fun fact: she was named after L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz. His initials make up the name El-Fa-Ba!

What are your favorite unique names in literature?

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