997+ Unique, Rare, and Unusual Girl Names

Term for a native-born Israeli, first brought to notice in Edna Ferber's 1929 novel Cimarron. Prickly pear has neen interpreted to mean tough on the outside, soft and sweet within.

Rayen is well-known in Chile, and sometimes seen in the Netherlands, as a Mapuche girls name meaning flower. This name could be an alternative to people who like Ryan but want to keep it as a boys name or as a spunkier alternative to other names that mean flower, such as Fleur and Flora.

While Austin is a popular boys' name, this spelling, honoring novelist Jane, nudges the name toward gender-neutral, chosen last year for 67 baby boys and 57 girls.

If Ellie and Evie are fashionable, why not Elvie? This is a diminutive of the Anglicized version of the Irish name spelled Ailbhe.

Cooler than April, May, or June, but also a tad icy.

Unfamiliar Asian choice that can work for a parent in search of something really different.

Obsolete Swanhild gives way to oh-so-modern Swan, joining the flock of newly fashionable bird names such as Wren and Lark. In France, the Swann spelling is fashionable for both sexes. But Swan carries an image of grace, though perhaps also a bit of languor. It's a lovely and original name, right for our times.

Out-of-the-way place name (it's an antiquated holiday spot on England's south coast) that might make a brilliant choice. Actor/director Jon Favreau named his daughter Brighton Rose.

A plausible color name, it was chosen by the singer Sting as a middle name for his daughter, after a character in the Gormenghast fantasy trilogy, of which he's a big fan.

Putting the emphasis on the "elle" softens a name that seems at once futuristic and medieval.

Will this old-fashioned nickname make a comeback, now that Jane has shed her "plain" image? Janie is cute and approachable, and would stand as well on the birth certificate as Josie and Jessie do now.

Dido was the heroine of Virgil's Aeneid and of the opera "Dido and Aeneas," and in Roman mythology the founder of Carthage. A strong ancient name in the Juno mode, but it could have some awkward associations down the line.

The name of a Guaraní princess killed by Spanish conquistadors in Tupi-Guarani legend. A Ceibo tree – the national flower of Argentina – is said to have bloomed in the spot where she died.

The Hawaiian word for sunflower is also used figuratively for people who gaze toward the sun, and has a nice resonance with Lion King name Nala.

An unusual old school name which is made more modern by that fashionable El- beginning.

Wylie is one Celtic surname with as much appeal for girls as for boys. Wylie is ripe for spelling variations: Wiley is as appropriate as Wylie but when you spell it Wylei, as Corey Parker did for his son, you're getting into yooneek naming territory.

The name of an affluent suburb of Columbus, Ohio and a section of Greater London, Bexley is increasingly being coopted by parents looking for a novel name in the Kinsley/AInsley/Paisley family. Bexley debuted on the US Top 1000 in 2016 and is definitely one of the trendiest girl names starting with B. Think of it as a 21st century Becky.

Another of the new Greek-accented Cal- names.

Eisele was originally a nickname for the Old German given name Isenhart, which derived from Isenlin — a nickname for a blacksmith.

This name of an area in northern Greece, known in the era of Homer's Odyssey as Aeolus. It's the name of a character in the graphic novel Sandman, and could easily be adopted for a modern little girl.