Tag Archives: Female Names

Samavia

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  • Origin: literary invention
  • Gender: Female
  • First Use: Late 1990s

The best-known appearance of this name is in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1915 novel The Lost Prince, where Samavia is the name of a fictional European kingdom.

Burnett probably coined it for its romantic, vaguely Eastern-European sound, combining familiar Slavic-sounding syllables (Sam-, -avia).

In Pakistan and parts of India you will occasionally see Samavia given to girls as a modern Muslim name, likely inspired by the pleasant sound of Burnett’s word or by similar Arabic-Persian names.

Parents often interpret it as a variant of Arabic names such as Samaviya/Samawiya, which can be linked to samāʾ (سَماء) “sky, heaven.”

Because this is a modern adaptation, meanings offered on baby-name sites—“heavenly,” “from the sky,” “sublime”—are interpretive rather than historically established.

It may also be related to a Prakrit word that means “accomplished, finished.”

It is not a traditional Arabic Muslim name nor is it a traditional name in India, it has only come into use the last 20 years.

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Tasnuva, Taznuva

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  • Origin: Bengali, Urdu
  • Gender: Female
  • Est: 1970s

The name is mostly an Urdu and Bengali coinage, composed of the Arabic word tāj (تاج) “crown” and the Persian word navā (نوا) “sound, tone, voice.”

It’s hard to say when this name first appeared. It has had sporadic use among South-Asian Muslims since the 1970s. Many sites have listed a fabricated origin and meaning.

It is not a classical Arabic name and is not used in Arabic-speaking countries, nor is it used in Iran.

The name is borne by Bengali actress, Tasnuva Tisha.

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Tanushka

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  • Origin: Indian
  • Gender: Female

The name is possibly a modern coinage based on Slavic sounding names that came into fashion in India starting in the 1970s.

It has been suggested that it is based on the Sanskrit तनु (tanu), meaning “slender,” and there is also the Sanskrit तनुश (tanusha), meaning, “abounding in trees.”

For all intents and purposes, it is a modern name and has only recently appeared as a given-name.

It is borne by Tanushka Singh (b. 2001), the first woman pilot to be accepted into the Indian Air Force’s Jaguar fighter jet squadron.

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Sophelia

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  • Origin: English
  • Gender: Female
  • First Use: 1857
  • Pron: (so-FEE-lee-ah)

This poetic beauty seems to have first occurred in British records in the mid 19th-century, there is a birth record for an Emily Sophelia Jefferis in Somerset, England from 1857. There are several records for English women who have this as a first name from the late 1800s onwards.

It is probably just an elaborate form of Sophia or perhaps a combination of Sophia and Ophelia. It has experienced very rare use in the U.K., about 5 baby girls were given this name in 2024.

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Vaila

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  • Origin: Scottish
  • Gender: Female
  • First Appearance: 1855
  • Pron: Vay-lah

From the transferred use of the place-name, Vaila is the name of an island in Shetland, Scotland. It has experienced use as a female name on the Shetland, Islands since the mid-18th-century.

The name itself is derived from the Old Norse, Valey, the later half meaning “island,” but the first part of its meaning is unknown.

Vaila has also been in rare use in Sweden and Norway, but in this case, it may have been a phonetic spelling of the English pronunciation of the name Viola (“violet,” Lat).

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Janiyah

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  • Origin: none
  • Gender: feminine
  • Meaning: none
  • Usage: English
  • Pron: juh-NYE-uh

The name is a relatively recent creation and became somewhat common in the African-American community, it is most likely inspired by similar sounding trendy names such as Shania and Aaliyah. It has been in the U.S. Top 1000 since 2003, peaked at #333 in 2009, and currently ranks in at #893 (2022).

Another form is Janiya.

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Xyla

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  • Origin: Greek
  • Meaning: “wood.”
  • Gender: feminine
  • Eng (ZY-lah); Grk (KSEE-lah)
  • Usage: English only

This name seems to have come out of nowhere and appeared in the U.S. Top 1000 most popular female names in 2022, ranking in at #978. It may have been popularized by the engineer and Youtuber, Xyla Foxlin.

It is most likely derived from the Greek word ξύλον (xylon) meaning “wood,” and it does appear as a surname in Greece, (the equivalent of the English surname Wood or Woods) but I could not find any evidence this has been used as a baptismal name in the Greek-speaking world. It is the surname of Greek actress, Fai Xyla.

It is also the name of a small beach located on the southeastern coast of Kea, Greece.

Other forms include: Zyla, Zylah, Xyla and Xylia.

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Amaris

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  • Origin: unknown
  • Meaning: none
  • Gender: feminine
  • Usage: Spanish

The name seems to be either a contraction of Amaryllis or inspired by the Biblical female name, Damaris. It first appeared in Spanish-speaking Caribbean in the late 70s when other names ending in -is, -ys were in fashion. Since then, several baby name books have listed it as meaning “child of the moon,” with elusive linguistic origins, the pleasant meaning seems to have spurred the usage of this name further outside Latin America. However, this etymology seems to be an invention.

It has been in an out of the USA Top 1000 since 2003, peaking at #753 in 2016. As of 2022, it ranked in at #909.

It has spun off more elaborate forms of Amarisa and Amarissa.

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Tigerlily

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  • Origin: English
  • Gender: Female

From the name of a type of flower, it was used as the name of the Native American princess in the J.M. Barrie play, Peter Pan (1904). Its use as a bona fide given name was boosted, however, when Paula Yates and Michael Hutchense used this as one of the middle names of their daughter, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence Geldof (b. 1994), also used by Michael Taylor the same year for his daughter, Tigerlily Taylor (b. 1994), now a model.

Its Nordic form of Tigerlilja has also been sporadically used in Nordic countries since the 1990s, more often as a middle name.

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Aubriella

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  • Origin: English
  • Gender: Feminine
  • First appearance: 1990s

The name is a modern feminization of the now unisex name Aubrey (please refer to Aubrey).

As a given name, it first sporadically appeared in the U.S. starting in the late 1990s. It entered the U.S. Top 1000 in 2014 and currently ranks in at #930 (2022).

Other forms include: Aubrielle and Aubriela.