Old-Fashioned, Vintage, Retro, Classic, Eclectic, Unusual and Uncommon Names for Girls

Ulrike and its Anglicized form Ulrica were given to exactly zero baby girls in the US last year, while their masculine form Ulrich was used for a dozen baby boys. U is the least common first initial for baby names in the US, making Ulrike extra unique. Ulrich and variations is German and means "rich and noble heritage".

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.

Ursula, while beautiful, still carries a whiff of the Disney sea witch. Perhaps Ursuline smells a bit sweeter?

Effortlessly stylish, with plenty of sweetness and strength, Valentina feels like a fresh alternative to Valerie, Victoria, or Vanessa.

Valeria -- the original form of the name, used by early Christians --has been experiencing significant popularity in recent years. While Valeria was nearly always on the charts, the name peaked in 2009 at #72, surpassing the longtime Franco-American version Valerie. Today Valeria and Valerie are at about equal rankings, sitting in the 150s.

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.

Vanessa was invented by writer Jonathan Swift for a lover named Esther Vanhomrigh—he combined the first syllable of her last name with the initial syllable of her first. Swift used it in the poem Cadenus and Vanessa in 1713. A century later, Johan Christian Fabricius used Vanessa as the name of a genus of butterfly.