Greek Names

Appropriate for a girl born between late September and late October, Libra suggests both balance and freedom.

Cool goddess name, but brace yourself for lots of sneaker jokes.

Cytherea, a place-name that is the home of Aphrodite, seems stuck in ancient Greece.

In ancient Greek mythology, a Trojan king with fifty children; in the modern world it sounds more like a computer language or environmentally correct car.

Ioanna may be an original spin on the Joanna family, but American tongues may have trouble wrapping themselves around all its vowels. Ioanna is pronounced ee-oh-ah-nah.

Only if you're hoping for your son to become a wine-besotted poet. To the ancient Romans, Bacchus was the god of agriculture, wine and fertility.

Hesperos or Hesperus is the personification of the evening star in Greek mythology; in Roman myth, that role is held by Venus. There's a Longfellow poem called "The Wreck of the Hesperus" about a tragic ship voyage.

A seriously classic name meaning love, Adelpha is also the name for a genus of butterflies.

Rarely heard New Testament name -- he was a friend of Saint Paul -- that might conceivably stand up to modern usage.

This version of the name of a Greek nymph, based on the ancient city of Larisa, is widely used in Russia thanks to a martyr saint venerated by the Eastern Church.

A male name occasionally borrowed by the girls, as in Dorian Cramer, a long-running female character on the soap One Life to Live and famous midcentury model Dorian Leigh.

Alexandrina is the most elaborate and unusual of the Alex- girls's names.The real first name of Queen Victoria, who was given it in honor of her godfather, Alexander I of Russia (her childhood nickname was Drina), it would make a distinctive pick, even though some might find five syllables a bit much. It was particularly popular in Scotland in the 1930s.

Petronella, and its shorter sister Petra, are both feminizations of Peter. While Petronella is a name with deep history, it's extremely rare. It was given to no baby girls on record in the US last year.

Vasilia is a feminine form of Vasil, the Slavic and Russian form of Basil. In the US, very rare.

Old Testament book way too heavy to carry.

Cyane is a mythological Sicilian nymph who lived in a pool and whose name is an intriguing twist on the color name trend.

Hillary is a lovely name that, for the moment at least, is tightly bound to an individual with a strong image: Hillary Clinton. Whatever your feelings about Mrs. Clinton, her fame now dominates the name, making it feel less baby-ready than it deserves to be. Hillary as a name has so much going for it: the popular, rhythmic three-syllable structure, the fact that it's strong but light, proper but jaunty, with an irresistible meaning -- having the same root as hilarious. The Italian Ilaria may be one way to make the name fresh.

See SELENA.