Literary Inspirations: Pride and Prejudice

Now that you know how I feel about Name Inspirations, I can move onto another new series - Literary Inspirations. In these posts I will expound upon one book or author to get some name inspiration. My first book is one close to  my heart (of course! Blogging is a selfish enterprise!). Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors, and Pride and Prejudice is clearly her most popular and most relevant novel. (If this were a book blog, perhaps I would expound on why I say its the most relevant and not necessarily the best, but it is not a book blog, so lets move onto names).

When it comes to Jane Austen, we are mostly talking about old, traditional English names which can have a lot of charm.  For girls, we first have the five sisters of the Bennett Family - Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine (Kitty), and Lydia. Then, their friends and correspondences: Charlotte, Caroline, Georgiana, and Anne. Of these names, the ones that stick out to me personally the most are Jane and Georgiana.

In fact, Georgiana has recently become one of my favorite girls names! Its soft and rolls so nicely off the tongue. It is very traditional and fits in with current trends, but its not being used and has not been in the top 1000 names since 1952.  A little Georgiana could go by Georgie, Giana, Ana or even Gigi (a nickname that I pretty much hated until I found this name as a source for it).

But you can be more creatively inspired by Pride and Prejudice than just grabbing the female characters names! In fact, besides Georgiana, my favorite P&P inspired girls names are Darcy, after the main male character Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Pemberly, the name of Mr. Darcy's mansion. Pemberly is lovely because it is reminiscent of Kimberly, but very unique. Darcy is cute and quirky, and the reference to P&P would be very subtle, if you even chose to make the reference at all.

There is also much inspiration for boys in P&P. The main male characters include Fitzwilliam, Charles, George,  and William. Once again however, I find some of the most fun names to consider are not the male characters at all (though I do like Fitzwilliam, more on that later). I love the last names! Bennett, Lucas, Forster, Collin, and Bingley. As well as place names, such as Derby (for Derbyshire), Hertford (Hertfordshire), Brighton, Rosing, and Kympton. Or, you could always just use Austen, for Jane Austen.

My favorite name fantasy for Pride and Prejudice (yes. I am a nameaholic. I have name fantasies) is boy/girl twins named Bennett and Darcy. I love this because (1) The names are the same style in my opinion and both sound modern (2) The reference to P&P is subtle enough that only those who really like the novel, and therefore would probably appreciate the reference, will catch it. (3) I like the Irony that the girl (Darcy) is named for male character Mr Darcy and the boy Bennett is named for the female character Elizabeth Bennett... Unfortunately, There are as many reasons for why this won't happen! (1) I would have to have boy/girl twins (what are the odds?) (2) My husband and (3) My son's name is Benjamin, don't think I can have a Bennett!

So what do you think, do you like ANY of the names from Pride and Prejudice? And if you do, would you use them because they are from the classic, or just because you like them?