Unique literary baby names for bibliophiles and writers

I’m a writer. My husband is a writer. And we’re both voracious readers. I’m guessing there’s a good chance that our little unborn one will at least have a passion for the written word. So I went very literary with my naming quest.

And I don’t mean “names from literature,” I mean literary baby names that allude to what literature IS. Names that come from forms of poetry, from storytellers, from the sound of words themselves, or styles of writing.

For example, I love the names Story, Fable, and Lyric. But those are definitely gaining a lot of popularity. And I’m sure they’ve all already come up on your name search. But what about truly unique literary baby names? Look no further my friends. I’ve done some DEEP internet diving for names that aren’t just “inspired by books” but names that have deep connection to the love and mastery of words…

• Alba — Old Occitan meanning “sunrise,” it’s also is a genre of Old Occitan lyric poetry — describing the longing of lovers who, having passed a night together, must separate for fear of being discovered.
• Belletrist (“Trist” or “Belle”) — A person who writes or is concerned with belles-lettres (biggest problem is the idea that belle-lettres can be thought of as “Written or appreciated for aesthetic value rather than content.”)
• Cadence — The term used to signal the rising and falling of the voice when reading a literary piece.
• Cauda — A “tail” (Latin), a short final line of a verse stanza.
• Edda — The Old Norse name given to two important collections of early Icelandic writing.
• Eiron — In ancient Greece, the eirôn was one of three stock characters in comedy, who succeeded in bringing down his braggart opponent (the alazôn) by understating his own abilities.
• Kenning — from Norse and Anglo-Saxon poetry: a stylistic device defined as a two-word phrase that describes an object through metaphors.
• Lai — French: A lyrical, narrative poem written in octosyllabic couplets that often deals with tales of adventure and romance.
• Lea — Spanish: “To read” in many conjugations of the verb “leer.”
• Lexis — The total vocabulary of a language.
• Lirit — Hebrew: poetic
• Nouvelle/Novelle — Another name for novella
• Octave — A strophe, stanza, or poem that consists of eight lines.
• Opus — Any artistic work, especially one on a large scale.
• Qissa/Kisa — Urdu/Swahili word for fable, or anecdote
• Quillan (“Quill”) — Irish/English: scribe, or writer with a quill pen
• Quintain (“Quin”) — A verse stanza of five lines. It appears in various forms, from the English limerick and Spanish lira and quintilla.
• Read — as in “to read”
• Riddle — A mystifying, misleading, or puzzling question posed as a problem to be solved or guessed.
• Rune (“Rue”) — After the runic alphabet. Also In Old Irish Gaelic, the word rún means “mystery,” “secret,” “intention,” or “affectionate love.”
• Sceal — “story” in Gaelic
• Scéalaí — storyteller
• Sestina — A type of a poem that contains six stanzas
• Teague — Gaelic: Storyteller
• Tristich (“Trist”) — Greek: a strophe, stanza, or poem that consists of exactly three lines. (This one was my favorite — I fought hard for it since I love the sound of it, love the shortened version, and I love that baby makes three for us.)
• Virelay / Virelai — A form of lyric poem or song found in medieval France.

I’d love to hear what unique literary baby names YOU’VE thought up! Leave ’em in the comments and help future baby-having bibliophiles…