Names with Military Meanings

This genial Irish surname feels much more current than Donald.

Last-name-first-name with a romantic but dangerous edge.

Inventive female form of Aloysius.

Pele is a female name in Hawaiian culture that could make a provocative choice for a modern girls. Others might think you named your daughter after the all-time great soccer player, but the simple, rare, and lovely name Pele has mythological roots.

Patton is an attractive name in the fashionable Haden-Peyton mold, though there is that association with the severe wartime general.

Caedmon is considered the first English poet -- a nice literary tie-in to the streamlined version.

Swam into style and quickly out again, on Chad's fish- er, coat-tails.

No matter how much you love the novels of Papa H., don't saddle your son with this unwieldy appellation.

Rarely heard, and all too likely to be confused with Kevin.

his engaging French saint's name, pronounced like tangy, with a hard 'g,' also has a creative connection to French surrealist painter Yves Tanguy.

Andromache is a name found scattered throughout ancient literature. She was Hector's long-suffering wife in The Iliad and The Odyssey, featured in The Trojan Women and Andromache by Euripides, then later appeared in Shakepeare's Troilus and Cressida, and Jean Racine's 1667 play Andromaque. It is not likely to make many appearances in the modern world.

A possible new entry in the Hayden-Corbin two-syllable boys' name club.

Levent is a common name in Turkey, derived from Ottoman Turkish levend — a soldier in the Ottoman navy. The name also has connections to the Venetian navy in renaissance times.

Pronounced klo-TEELD, this name is well used in France, but rarely heard here; it has a chic and sophisticated air.

In literature identified with The Sorrows of Young Werther -- not much to wish on a child.

This name of the mythological sister of Mars might be used for a girl born under one of the signs ruled by the planet Mars--Aries or Scorpio. She is the personification of the war cry.

The M and the R add welcome strength.

An ancient name belonging to "the most beautiful of all women" in Germanic mythology, whose tragic story features in many northern European legends. The daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun, her jealous husband had her murdered after she was accused of infidelity, and was then himself killed by Swanhild's brothers.

Seventies comic-book-heroine-style name.

Difficult name familiar here mainly via D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love.