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Literary Middle Names
80 middle names out of books, each credited to the author or the work it comes from — poets and novelists in one column, the characters they wrote in the other.
A literary name comes from one of three places, and they behave differently in the middle slot. There are author surnames used as given names: Harper (Lee), Auden, Keats, Yeats, Tennyson, Twain, Hawthorne, Flannery (O'Connor), Willa (Cather), Zane (Grey). These carry a surname's rhythm — a strong first syllable and a trailing weak one — and they sit well behind a soft, vowel-heavy first name. There are character names: Atticus, Scout, Cordelia, Miranda, Portia, Estella, Holden, Ishmael, Cosette. These come loaded with a personality, so read the book, not the summary. And there are author first names, the quietest of the three: Emily, Oscar, Walt, Sylvia, Truman, Langston. Nobody will interrogate an Emily, which is the point — you get the reference without the child having to carry it.
Middle names are the right place for a bookish choice because they are opt-in. A child named Ishmael is answering for Melville every day of school; a child named Wren Ishmael has a fact about themselves they can produce when they want to. That principle also settles the pairing question. The more famous the reference, the further it should sit from the first name: Atticus works beautifully as a middle behind a plain first (June Atticus is a stretch, but Theo Atticus is not), while Atticus Finch as a full name is a costume. Watch two seams in particular on this list. Surname-style middles ending in -er or -son (Chandler, Emerson, Tennyson) collide with surnames that do the same, so say all three names before deciding. And several picks are genuinely tragic figures — Ophelia drowns, Heathcliff destroys everyone near him, Dorian Gray is a moral horror story, Jude the Obscure is the bleakest novel Hardy wrote. Beautiful names, and worth knowing about first.
Top picks, annotated
- Harper — Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird; two crisp beats
- Atticus — Atticus Finch, the same novel; three beats, hard T
- Beatrice — Dante's guide in the Divine Comedy; also Shakespeare's wit
- Marlowe — Christopher Marlowe the playwright, Philip Marlowe the detective
- Eliot — George Eliot's pen name and T. S. Eliot's surname
- Scout — the narrator of Mockingbird; one blunt, unisex beat
- Darcy — Austen's Pride and Prejudice; softer than it looks
- Byron — Lord Byron, the Romantic poet; two beats, dry consonants
- Wilder — Laura Ingalls Wilder and Thornton Wilder both claim it
- Ophelia — Hamlet; gorgeous four beats, but she drowns
The lists below are alphabetical, and each name has a book behind it. Among the girls: Alcott (Little Women), Anais (Nin), Antonia (Cather's My Antonia), Ariel (Shakespeare's Tempest sprite and Plath's last collection), Austen, Beatrix (Potter), Bronte, Clarissa (Woolf's Mrs Dalloway), Cordelia (King Lear), Cosette and Eponine (Les Miserables), Dorothea (Eliot's Middlemarch), Emily (Dickinson and Bronte both), Esme (Salinger), Estella (Great Expectations), Evangeline (Longfellow), Flannery (O'Connor), Franny (Salinger again), Harriet (Harriet the Spy), Hermione (The Winter's Tale, long before Rowling), Jo and Meg (Little Women), Juliet, Lenore (Poe's The Raven), Matilda (Dahl), Maya (Angelou), Miranda (The Tempest), Nell (The Old Curiosity Shop), Nerissa and Portia (The Merchant of Venice), Rosalind (As You Like It), Sylvia (Plath), Tess (Hardy), Viola (Twelfth Night) and Willa (Cather). Among the boys: Auden, Beckett, Blake, Bram (Stoker), Chandler, Dashiell (Hammett), Edgar (Poe, and Lear's Edgar), Emerson, Finn (Huckleberry), Gulliver (Swift), Hawthorne, Holden (The Catcher in the Rye), Homer, Hugo, Ishmael (Moby-Dick), Keats, Kipling, Langston (Hughes), Milton, Oscar (Wilde), Poe, Rudyard (Kipling's own first name), Sawyer, Sebastian (Twelfth Night), Shelley, Sinclair (Lewis), Tennyson, Truman (Capote), Twain, Walden (Thoreau's book), Walt (Whitman), Whitman, Wilde, Yeats and Zane (Grey).
For girls
- Alcott
- Anais
- Antonia
- Ariel
- Austen
- Beatrix
- Bronte
- Clarissa
- Cordelia
- Cosette
- Dorothea
- Emily
- Eponine
- Esme
- Estella
- Evangeline
- Flannery
- Franny
- Harriet
- Hermione
- Jo
- Juliet
- Lenore
- Matilda
- Maya
- Meg
- Miranda
- Nell
- Nerissa
- Portia
- Rosalind
- Sylvia
- Tess
- Viola
- Willa
For boys
- Auden
- Beckett
- Blake
- Bram
- Chandler
- Dashiell
- Edgar
- Emerson
- Finn
- Gulliver
- Hawthorne
- Holden
- Homer
- Hugo
- Ishmael
- Keats
- Kipling
- Langston
- Milton
- Oscar
- Poe
- Rudyard
- Sawyer
- Sebastian
- Shelley
- Sinclair
- Tennyson
- Truman
- Twain
- Walden
- Walt
- Whitman
- Wilde
- Yeats
- Zane
Pairing rule: never take the first and middle name from the same book. Scout Atticus, Jo Beth, Cosette Eponine and Rosalind Viola all read as fan casting rather than naming. One name from the shelf, one from the family, and the reference stays a private pleasure instead of a public quiz.
Keep browsing
Adjacent styles: vintage middle names, which share this list's century, rare for the Edwardian and Bloomsbury end of it, classic for the Shakespearean names that went mainstream, and mythology for the stories that came before the novels. Many of the surnames here are English origin names in the plainest sense. Then see how to choose a middle name, or return to all 22 styles.