Power Names/Fantasy

If you are looking for an unusual way to honor an ancestral Mary or Miriam, Mirja might make a good choice. Zero baby girls were given this name in the US in 2014. The rising popularity of Anja has schooled English speakers that the j is pronounced like a y.

Resonant place-name of the beautiful Southern California desert.

Not most people's favorite day, but a pretty name.

Morocco is an attractive and rhythmic name, evocative of such fabled cities as Casablanca, Tangier and Marrakesh, in a country whose unique landscape and rich culture attracted such twentieth century writers as Tennessee Williams, Paul Bowles and William Burroughs.

Interesting Old Testament name that embraces many traditional female attributes; also name of a place in the Jordan Valley. In the Bible, a daughter of King Ammon and wife of Solomon.

More unusual than Natalia or Natalie.

Light and rhythmic.

Beguiling cousin of Sahara.

A very popular girls' name in the Basque country and Puerto Rico. It is among the Top 100 Spanish baby names, so it's a girls' name that's widely used in Spain.

Pretty and feminine Arabic name.

This name of a subtribe in the Great Sioux Nation could make an inventive twist on the overused Dakota.

A Disney name—Nala was the friend who became the wife of Simba, hero of The Lion King. It debuted on the US Top 1000 in 2015.

Naoko is a common Japanese name with an admirable meaning, which, depending on how it's written, can translate to obedient, straight, honest, or green child. Naoko can also be spelled Nahoko.

Rarely used biblical choice -- he's a son of Jacob -- with a bit of a white-bearded image.

The name of a city in New Hampshire which takes its name from the Nashua River, named by the Indigenous Algonquian tribe the Nashuway or Nashua. A striking alternative to Joshua.