The name was mainly confined to Spain and Portugal during the Middle Ages. After the 16th century it was spread to other parts of the Christian world, due to the fame of the Spanish nun and reformer Saint Teresa of Ávila. Another famous bearer was the Austrian Habsburg queen Maria Theresa (1717-1780), who inherited the domains of her father, the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI, beginning the War of the Austrian Succession.
As an English name, it was occasionally used during the Middle Ages in honour of the Old Testament heroine. It did not become common until after the Protestant Reformation, at which time it was often spelled Susan.
It has occasionally been used as an English given name since the 16th century. It was moderately popular in the 1940s, but had a more notable upswing in the early 2000s. This may have been inspired by the Spanish actress Penélope Cruz (1974-), who gained prominence in English-language movies at that time. It was already rapidly rising when celebrities Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick gave it to their baby daughter in 2012.
The name was not used in England until after the Protestant Reformation. A notable bearer was Martha Washington (1731-1802), the wife of the first American president George Washington. It is also borne by the media personality Martha Stewart (1941-).
As an English name it has been very popular since the Middle Ages. It was the top name for girls in England and Wales in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, but it declined in the latter half of the 20th century.
Other saints by this name include a queen of Scotland and a princess of Hungary. It was also borne by Queen Margaret I of Denmark, who united Denmark, Sweden, and Norway in the 14th century. Famous literary bearers include American writer Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949), the author of Gone with the Wind, and Canadian writer Margaret Atwood (1939-). Others include American anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978) and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013).
This name (in various spellings) has been common among European royalty, being borne by ruling queens of Naples, Navarre and Castile. Another famous bearer was Joan of Arc, a patron saint of France (where she is known as Jeanne d'Arc). She was a 15th-century peasant girl who, after claiming she heard messages from God, was given leadership of the French army. She defeated the English in the battle of Orléans but was eventually captured and burned at the stake.
Other notable bearers include the actress Joan Crawford (1904-1977) and the comedian Joan Rivers (1933-2014), both Americans.
Famous bearers include the uncrowned English queen Lady Jane Grey (1536-1554), who ruled for only nine days, British novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817), who wrote Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, British primatologist Jane Goodall (1934-), and American actress Jane Fonda (1937-). This is also the name of the central character in Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre (1847), which tells of Jane's sad childhood and her relationship with Edward Rochester.
Despite this potentially negative association, the name was occasionally used by Christians during the Middle Ages. In the English-speaking world both Eve and the Latin form Eva were revived in the 19th century, with the latter being more common.
This name was fairly popular at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. The American author F. Scott Fitzgerald used it for the character of Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby (1925). The Walt Disney cartoon character Daisy Duck was created in 1940 as the girlfriend of Donald Duck. It was at a low in popularity in the United States in the 1970s when it got a small boost from a character on the television series The Dukes of Hazzard in 1979.
The spelling was later altered to Cordelia when Geoffrey's story was adapted by others, including Edmund Spenser in his poem The Faerie Queene (1590) and Shakespeare in his tragedy King Lear (1606).
This is also the name of an Irish county, which was itself probably derived from Irish clár meaning "plank, level surface".
As an English name it has been in use since the Middle Ages, originally in the form Clare, though the Latinate spelling Clara overtook it in the 19th century and became very popular. It declined through most of the 20th century (being eclipsed by the French form Claire in English-speaking countries), though it has since recovered somewhat.
Due to the popularity of the saint, the name became common in the Christian world during the Middle Ages. The Normans brought it to England, where it was commonly spelled Cecily — the Latinate form Cecilia came into use in the 18th century.
In England the name became rare after the Middle Ages, but it was revived in the 19th century, more commonly in the spelling Beatrice. Famous bearers include the British author and illustrator Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), the creator of Peter Rabbit, and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands (1938-).
The daughter of Zeus, she was said to have sprung from his head fully grown after he impregnated and swallowed her mother Metis. Athena is associated with the olive tree and the owl.
The name was borne by a 17th-century English queen and also by the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn (the mother of Queen Elizabeth I), who was eventually beheaded in the Tower of London. Another notable bearer was the German-Jewish diarist Anne (Annelies) Frank, a young victim of the Holocaust in 1945. This is also the name of the heroine in the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables by Canadian author L. M. Montgomery.
This name was borne by the heroine of Lewis Carroll's novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871).