Invented names

I’m writing a short blog today on unusual and invented names.
One that I came across recently was “Uma” which was apparently invented by the writer Robert Louis Stevenson.  It’s not clear what the meaning is... But it is the name of the film actress, Uma Thurman.   It has not become popular…

However another novelist invented name did become very popular for some time.  Thelma was created by the Victorian novelist Marie Corelli... who seems to have modified the Greek word “Thelema” meaning wish or will.  It appeared in one of her novels and was well liked in the earlier 20^th Century.   Another name used by Corelli is “Mavis” which also became very popular in the 20^th century though it has now gone out of fashion.  It is based on a name for the songbird, the thrush and is sometimes confused with the Irish name Maeve.

Another literary name, Oriana, was invented by Elizabethan poets as a name for Queen Elizabeth I.  It was also used by Tennyson in a long ballad poem but has never become popular in England, though occasionally used in France – the French version is Oriane…  It comes from the Latin and means dawn or Sunrise.  There is a character called Oriane in Proust's novels...

Wendy is a name that was very popular but now may seem bit old fashioned.  It was invented by the playwright J M Barrie... based on a child calling him her “Frendy-Wendy”.  It was used in Peter Pan and also popularized by the poet John Betjeman, as the name of a little girl in one of his poems... about children playing.

India is a name that occasionally was used in the 20^th century by people who had connections with India, often through the British Empire.  It was popularized by Margaret Mitchell using it as a name in Gone with the Wind.

Some invented names “take on” and become well known and used – while others seem to remain as mainly literary names which are rarely if ever used in real life…