Names: family and otherwise

This week's Top Ten Tuesday from The Broke and the Bookish is: Fictional Characters and Literary Figures You'd Name Your Children After...

Well.

My child-bearing days are likely over--unless by typing this I have somehow tempted The Universe into a big ol' "we'll just see about that," in which case I leave my options wide open--but I will, I hope, continue to name pets, plants, cars, and bicycles for many years to come.

And I already have one daughter named after (depending on which day you catch me): Elinor Dashwood, my favorite Austen heroine, or Elanor Gamgee, my favorite baby hobbit, or Eleanor of Aquitaine, my favorite bloodthirsty queen, or Eleanor Roosevelt, my favorite knitting first lady, or Eleanor Rigby, my favorite sad and lonely person (where do they all come from?). So the precedent has been set.

1. Laura, as in Ingalls Wilder. I also have two lovely friends named Laura, plus a much beloved cousin, so this name is a natural fit in my life. (The name Almanzo, however, does not make the cut.)
2. Max, of Where the Wild Things Are. Who wouldn't wish for an imaginative, boisterous, amazing boy such as this?
3. Rita, as in the lovely Meter Maid.
4. Meg, Margaret, Megatron--Miss Murry of Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartet (and many other companion books) who guided me through quite the ugly duckling phase myself. Although why she and Calvin named one of their daughters Polyhymnia is quite beyond me.
5. Claire, of the Outlander books by Diana Gabaldon. Though the books' quality has ebbed as the series has worn on, and on, and on...Claire in Outlander is a feisty, sexy, smart heroine we all can love and hope to emulate.
6. Edward. Or Jacob? I can't decide. (JUST KIDDING!)
7. Neville, as in Longbottom, as in the unsung hero of the Harry Potter books. He's one who, though not ordained by any prophecy with overwhelming responsibility (though he COULD have been), chooses love, good, and Herbology despite daunting odds. Neville is The Boy Who Chose. And can't you see a cat named Neville?
8. Penny, as in Lane and also as in the love of Dr. Horrible's life.
9. Pearl, as in Prynne-Dimmesdale, the girl who took what life handed her [mother] and lived to fight another day--in Europe, far away from those nasty Puritans.
10. Bryony. Bryony is one of the brave piglets in Mr. and Mrs. Pig's Evening Out, by Mary Rayner, the first book I ever read--really read, not just memorized--a book that is quite possibly (I'm just realizing) the headwaters of my Anglophilia and love for sunny texts with dark shadows.