Rare Name Generator

A rare name is not an invented one. The names here are real given names that sit far outside the top thousand in English-speaking countries, which is where the sense of rarity comes from: Cornish revivals like Demelza, Kerensa and Jowan; Welsh names such as Eluned, Heledd and Macsen; Irish and Scottish Gaelic spellings like Sadhbh, Fiachra and Sorley; Scandinavian and German names like Sunniva, Eivind and Wolfram; French, Italian and Basque picks like Capucine, Tancredi and Itziar; Persian, Hebrew, Slavic and Yoruba names like Golnar, Tirzah, Jaromir and Adaeze; and Victorian names that fell out of fashion a century ago, from Ottoline and Etheldreda to Isambard and Hereward.

Rarity in one country is often ordinary in another, so the list tells you the origin by sound rather than forcing everything into an Anglo shape. That matters for usability: Sadhbh, Siofra and Aoibheann are beautiful but will need spelling out at every school and clinic in the US, while Merryn, Anselm or Leonie are equally uncommon and self-explanatory.

The list is deliberately mixed, with girls', boys' and a few unisex names shuffled together, so scanning it works like flipping through an old register rather than reading a themed list.