Virtue Names Off the Beaten Track

Honor is a somewhat more straight-laced virtue name than Hope or Grace, placing a high standard on any girl carrying it, but it's a goal worth setting. By choosing Honor for her daughter, Jessica Alba brought it very much into the modern world.

Illumination is a many-syllabled entrant in the new-fashioned virtue name group, but doesn't stand much chance of rivaling shorter choices like Hope and Faith.

Justice, one of the rare virtue names for boys, entered the popularity ranks in 1992, and has remained on the list ever since. Parents' search for names implying virtue has led to a mini-revival of this long-neglected name in both its German homonymic form, Justus, and as the word itself. Steven Seagal was ahead of the curve when he used it back in 1976.

Actor Mark Ruffalo honed this surname down to its basics when he chose it for his son. A more usable expansion might be the Irish surname Keenan/Keenen.

Less common than other virtue names, Liberty is nonetheless a name with a long American heritage.

Love makes an endearing middle name, as in Jennifer Love Hewitt. However, more parents are considering Love as a first name — enough for it to enter the charts for the first time in 2022 as one of the fastest-rising names of the year. Other love-related alternatives include Juliet, Valentina, and Amor.

Loyal is one of the few virtue names suitable for boys, an honorable and principled Boy Scout-esque appellation with a surprisingly long and distinguished history.

Marvel, now a character name in The Hunger Games series, was a miracle name of yesterday, on the girls' Social Security list until 1941 and reaching a high of 487 at the turn of the last century, when Marva was also in style.

The quality of mercy makes this lovely Puritan virtue name a quiet favorite today. Although it was most popular in the late nineteenth century, Mercy is on its way to a comeback -- it rose 143 spots between 2012 and 2013, making it one of the year's fastest-rising names. Right now, it's still stylish and distinctive, a rare and wonderful combination.

She'd better be. Merry is one of the classic names for Christmas babies.

Like Penn Jillette, you can have your own little brash babe.

With parents beginning to show an interest in virtue names for boys, this Puritan favorite just might be revived, for what could be more admirable than nobility in terms of having strength of character, dignity, and high moral ideals?

Patience is a passive virtue turned engaging name, fresher than Hope, Faith, or even Charity. Its resemblance to the trendy Payton may be one reason for its recent spike in popularity.

Pax, one of the variations of names meaning peace that are newly popular in these less-than-peaceful times, got a lot of publicity when chosen by Brad & Angelina for their Vietnamese-born son. Parents attracted to Pax may also want to consider Paz, the unisex Spanish version, or Paxton, a growing-in-popularity surname choice that shares that magical X-factor.

Peace may be an admirable sentiment to convey in a child's name, but the translated and thus more subtle versions, like Pax or Placido, might work better as first names.