Agatha Christie Names

The Sydney spelling most popular for girls: it's in the Top 50 on the female side. Cool for a girl, still nerdy for a guy.

The musical, sylvan Sylvia seems poised to join former friends Frances and Beatrice and Dorothy back in the nursery.

Like Ed, Eddie and Teddy, Ted is rarely used as an independent name – in the US, at least. In the UK, Eddie ranks just outside the Top 200, Teddy ranks just outside the Top 30, and Ted is a Top 200 pick.

With Theodore rising, Ted may have new life among parents who don't want to use the short form Theo. And TV's Ted Lasso makes it a quintessential nice guy name.

A name that seems to hail from the old Irish neighborhoods of Boston and New York, Terence actually dates back a lot further, to the time of a famous second-century poet, who started life as a North African enslaved man in the house of a Roman senator and it was also borne by several early saints.

A solid classic with plenty of history, Thomas strikes the balance between strength and gentleness. A favorite in the UK, a staple in France, and Australia, and never absent from the US Top 100, Thomas feels like a safe bet and a name that fits into any era.

Though rarely used now that many parents would rather appropriate men's names than sweeten them with feminine endings, Thomasina does have some vintage appeal.

Tim is a boyish short form very rarely given on its own.

Just like Sam and Ben, Tom could be revived as a simple, well liked name on its own. Tom, just Tom, is one of the Top 100 Boy Names in France

A surprising number of parents choose to put the nickname Tommy on their son's birth certificate rather than the more traditional Thomas. Perhaps even more surprising is thE fact that Tommy has never been off the United States popularity charts. More recently, however, the name has been trending downward.

Torquil, is a quirky but intriguing option that evolved from an ancient Scandinavian nameand was imported into Scotland by the Vikings. The Gaelic form of the name is Torcaill.

A saint's name with a noteworthy literary background, including uses by Shakespeare in Two Gentlemen of Verona and Much Ado About Nothing, by Ben Johnson, Walter Scott, Longfellow, D. H. Lawrence and Neil Gaiman. In real life, her two most well known representatives are writer Ursula Le Guin and actress Ursula Andress. In literature, there is also Ursula Iguaran, a key, long-lived character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's major work, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The name of a martyred medieval saint, Valerie has been on the popularity list since its earliest publication in 1880. Though it peaked in the 1960s, remaining in the Top 100 until 1988, it still doesn't sound terminally dated; the association with the word valor gives it a sense of boldness and makes it one of the special group of girl names that mean strong.

Vera was the height of fashion in 1910, then was for a long time difficult to picture embroidered on a baby blanket. Now, though, it has come back into style along with other old-fashioned simple names such as Ada and Iris.

Victoria is the Latin word for "victory" and a feminine form of Victor. It is the name of the ancient Roman goddess of victory, the equivalent of the Greek Nike, and also a popular third century saint.

Virginia is a lovely place name starting with the fashionable V and having deep historical roots, yet, unlike some other other girls' classics, has been sorely neglected in recent years.

Vivien (Scarlett O'Hara) Leigh was born Vivian. Some sources give Vivien as a relative of the Irish goddess name Bebinn and a literary name invented by Tennyson. Others say it's related to the Latin-based Viviana, meaning life. This spelling of the name is as legitimate as many others.