219 Elegant Old Money Girl Names From 1800s

Mary was given to 91,668 American girls in the 1880s, more than twice the count for Anna in second place on the SSA list. I have hand-picked and additional 219 old money girl names.

List Of Elegant Old Money Girl Names From 1800s And Their Meanings:

Cordelia

Cordelia (“heart”) is the youngest of King Lear’s three girls. She’s the one who refuses to flatter her father.

Theodosia

Theodosia Burr was the daughter of Aaron Burr and sheboarded the schooner Patriot in South Carolina at the end of 1812. That ship was never found. This name means “giving to God.”

Geraldine

Rule of the spear, and the Earl of Surrey’s “fair Geraldine.”

Gertrude

Gertrude comes from ger, spear, and þruþ, strength. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was a sculptor who opened the Whitney Museum of American Art in Greenwich Village.

Phoebe

Bright, pure. William Pickering found Saturn’s moon Phoebe, first moon ever found on photographic plates.

Wilhelmina

From wil, will, and helm, helmet. Wilhelmina was queen of the Netherlands for fifty-eight years, from 1890 to 1948. She spoke to her occupied country by radio from London during the World War II.

Opal

Sanskrit upala: jewel.

Honoria

Honour.

Old Money French Girl Names:

Name	Meaning	Pronunciation
Solange	solemn	so-LAHNZH
Hortense	”garden”	or-TAHNS
Bernadette	bear, or hardy	ber-na-DET
Sidonie	from Sidon	see-do-NEE
Eugénie	”well born.”	uh-zhay-NEE
Mireille	to admire	mee-RAY
Apolline	of Apollo	a-po-LEEN
Clotilde	”famous battle”	klo-TEELD
Sylvie	the forest one	seel-VEE
Geneviève	kin and woman	zhuhn-VYEV or zhen-uh-VEEV
Colette	”victory of the people”	ko-LET
Léonie	lion, in Latin	lay-o-NEE
Héloïse	hale and wide	ay-lo-EEZ
Gisèle	pledge, or hostage	zhee-ZEL
Delphine	of Delphi	del-FEEN

The lits continues.

Ianthe

‘Violet flower’.

Constance

Constancy, and Oscar Wilde’s wife from 1884, Constance Lloyd.

Susannah

Lily, from shoshan. Susanna and the Elders is in Daniel’s Greek additions.

Bertha

Bright. In the 1880s it stood at number eight on the SSA list. Big Bertha was the German siege howitzer of World War I and she was called after Bertha Krupp, who was actually the heiress of the family steelworks in Essen.

Keziah

Cassia, the spice bark.

Myrtle

Myrtle is symbolizing love in Victorian flower language. Save

Fenella

Fenella is a mute girl (in fact she only pretends) in Scott’s Peveril of the Peak, and Gaelic Fionnghuala means “white shoulder”.

Ida

‘Work, labour’. It was number seven on the SSA list for the 1880s.

Beulah

Married.

Damaris

Calf.

Caroline

Caroline Schermerhorn Astor ran New York society for decades from her house on Fifth Avenue. Her ballroom had room for about four hundred guests. That number became the Four Hundred, shorthand for the families who counted. Caroline is a feminine form of Charles, “free man.”

Rosalind

From Germanic hros, horse, and lind, tender or flexible. The young woman who escapes to the Forest of Arden in As You Like It.

Euphemia

Well-spoken. Effie Gray left John Ruskin after six years (the marriage was annulled in 1854) and became Mrs Millais one year later.

Ambrosia

“Immortal”.

Pearl

Pearl, the gem, and Hester Prynne’s child in The Scarlet Letter (1850).

Rosamund

Horse protection. Same hros root as Rosalind. Save

Henrietta

Maryland was called after Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, and Henrietta means home ruler.

Verity

Truth, from Latin veritas.

Azalea

Dry.

Old Money Rich Names for Girls:

Name	Meaning	Pronunciation
Whitney	white island	WIT-nee
Lucretia	profit, or wealth	loo-KREE-shuh
Golda	gold, as hoped	GOHL-duh
Astor	”goshawk”	AS-ter
Faustina	lucky	faw-STEE-nuh or fow-STEE-nah
Sloane	the raider	SLOHN
Aurelia	”golden.”	aw-REE-lee-uh
Ricarda	brave ruler	ree-KAR-duh
Hadley	heather field	HAD-lee
Moneta	she who warns	moh-NAY-tuh
Edwina	”rich friend”	ed-WEE-nuh
Ruby	red, in Latin	ROO-bee
Blair	plain, or field	BLAIR
Tiffany	”manifestation of God”	TIF-uh-nee
Gemma	gem	JEM-uh
Fortuna	fortune	for-TOO-nuh

Scroll for more below.

Ruth

Friend.

Consuelo

Consuelo Vanderbilt married the ninth Duke of Marlborough in 1895, a match her mother Alva arranged, and the Spanish word means “consolation.” A Vatican court annulled that marriage in 1926, over three decades after the wedding at St. Thomas Church.

Mildred

Mildred, from milde, gentle, and þryð, strength, was abbess of Minster-in-Thanet in Kent in the seventh century.

Clio

Glory: kleos in Greek.

Hephzibah

Hephzibah – “My delight is in her.” “thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah: for the LORD delighteth in thee” (Isaiah 62:4, KJV).

Tamar

Date palm. Save

Florence

Florence Nightingale was born in Florence in 1820 and her parents called her after the city, that means ‘flourishing, prosperous’ in its Latin form.

Etheldreda

Æðelþryð in Old English, noble strength. Fairs on St Audrey’s day sold cheap lace neckbands.

Frances

Frenchman, from Latin Franciscus. Frances Folsom married President Grover Cleveland in the White House in 1886, at age twenty-one.

Amity

Friendship.

Zipporah

Bird. She’s the wife of Moses in Exodus.

Evangeline

Evangeline is from Greek euangelion (εὐαγγέλιον) “good news.” Longfellow wrote in Evangeline (1847) about the girl of Grand-Pré: “Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers.” Source

Elfrida

Ælfþryð, elf strength.

Hazel

Hæsel, the nut tree. Save

Dinah

Judged, and Alice’s cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Octavia

Eighth, and Octavia Hill (who started out managing slum housing in London) co-founded the National Trust.

Iris

Iris is symbolizing a rainbow, the road the Greek messenger goddess travelled between gods and people.

Philomena

It combines philos, friend, with menos, strength. In 1802 diggers in the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome found bones in a niche that was sealed with three tiles that spelled her inscription. The cult that followed made her a favorite saint of the 1800s.

Claudia

‘Lame’, from claudus, which, fair enough, is rough.

Adelaide

Noble type. I have a weakness for girls’ names that are also cities. Adelaide in South Australia got its title from Queen Adelaide in 1836.

Sophia

Wisdom, Σοφία in Greek. Sophia of Hanover was made heir to the British throne by the Act of Settlement and missed the crown by weeks when she died in 1714.

Martha

Martha Washington’s portrait went on the one-dollar silver certificate and is is Aramaic for “lady, mistress”.

Undine

Wave, from Latin unda.

Fiona

White, fair.

Prudence

Foresight.

Isadora

Isadora means “gift of Isis.” The dancer Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) performed barefoot in Greek tunics. She died in Nice when her long silk scarf got caught into the wheel of an open car.

Emma

Whole, universal. Third on the SSA list for the 1880s as well as Jane Austen’s matchmaker in Emma (1815).

Amelia

From amal, work. Bloomers are named for Amelia Bloomer, who pushed the trousers in her newspaper The Lily.

Ursula

Little bear. It is said Ursula died at Cologne with eleven thousand virgins.

Millicent

Strong in work. Same amal root as Amelia.

Rachel

Ewe.

Calliope

She is the muse of epic poetry, and her meaning is “beautiful voice”. In 1855 Joshua Stoddard patented a steam organ for riverboats and fairs, and he called it the calliope.

Ophelia

Help. Elizabeth Siddal posed for Millais’s Ophelia (1851-52) in a bathtub warmed by lamps. When the lamps went out she caught a severe cold.

Mercedes

Mercies. Mercedes cars got the label from Mercedes Jellinek, daughter of Emil Jellinek, a Daimler dealer in Nice.

Hope

Hope, as in the virtue.

Anthea

Flowery.

Chloe

Green shoot.

Edith

From ead, wealth or fortune, and gyð, war. The Age of Innocence made Edith Wharton the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Georgiana

Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, had gambling debts and the Greek georgos means farmer, earthworker.

Theodora

Gift of God, and an empress of Byzantium who started out as an actress.

Delia

Of Delos.

Sabina

Sabine woman.

Bridget

Bridget is meaning “exalted one”. Saint Brigid of Kildare is Ireland’s patron after Patrick.

Dorothea

‘Gift of God’ again.

Victoria

Victory. David Livingstone saw the falls on the Zambezi in 1855.

Lucinda

An elaboration of Lucia, light, used by Cervantes in Don Quixote.

Eunice

Good victory.

Faith

“Faith.”

Ivy

The climbing plant.

Alberta

Noble and bright. Canada’s province of Alberta takes its label from Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, Queen Victoria’s daughter.

Abigail

In 1776 Abigail Adams asked her husband John and the Congress to “remember the ladies,”. Abigail means my father is joy.

Bathsheba

Daughter of the oath. Hardy’s Bathsheba Everdene runs her uncle’s farm by herself in Far from the Madding Crowd.

Celia

Heaven.

Jessamine

Jasmine, from Persian yasamin.

Thalia

To blossom.

Grace

Grace.

Imogen

Imogen in Cymbeline is a printer’s typo for Innogen, and the Gaelic inghean means maiden.

Flora

Flower. Flora MacDonald smuggled Bonnie Prince Charlie to Skye in 1746, with prince dressed as her Irish maid, Betty Burke.

Naomi

Pleasantness.

Eudora

Good gift, and Eudora Welty, the Mississippi short-story writer.

Penelope

Weaver.

Cecily

From Latin caecus, blind. Cecily Neville, the “Rose of Raby,” was mother to two kings, Edward IV and Richard III.

Leopoldina

Leopoldina is from leud, people, and bald, bold. Archduchess Maria Leopoldina of Austria went to Brazil as the bride of the future Pedro I.

Virginia

Maiden. Virginia Dare, born at Roanoke in 1587, was the first English child born in the Americas.

Muriel

Muriel: come from Gaelic muir, sea, and geal, bright.

Esther

Star in Persian.

Mabel

Short form of Amabel, ‘lovable’.

Gloriana

Glory. Spenser used it for Elizabeth I in The Faerie Queene.

Agnes

‘Chaste’. Keats set The Eve of St. Agnes on the night before her feast in January.

Sapphira

Sapphira means “beautiful” in Aramaic. In Acts 5 she and her husband Ananias fell dead in the same day.

Josephine

He will add. Napoleon’s empress was baptized Marie Josèphe Rose.

Lydia

From Lydia, a kingdom in Asia Minor. Lydia Bennet run off with Wickham in Pride and Prejudice.

Felicity

Happiness.

Hyacinth

The flower, from Greek Hyakinthos.

Doris

Dorian woman.

Augusta

Venerable. Ada Lovelace, who published notes on Babbage’s Analytical Engine was christened Augusta Ada Byron.

Rhoda

Rhoda – ‘Rose.’ “And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to hearken, named Rhoda.” (Acts 12:13, KJV)

Dahlia

Valley, via botanist Anders Dahl.

Allegra

Lively, cheerful. Lord Byron’s daughter Allegra died at five in a Italian convent.

Elizabeth

Elisheba in Hebrew, “my God is an oath.” It stood fourth on the SSA list for the 1880s.

Pauline

Small. Canova carved Pauline Bonaparte half-naked as Venus Victrix, and its in Rome’s Galleria Borghese.

Sybil

Prophetess, and a Disraeli novel from 1845.

Venetia

From Venice.

Desdemona

Ill-fated.

Winifred

Gwenfrewi in Welsh, from gwen, blessed, and frewi, reconciliation. Pilgrims have bathed at St Winefride’s Well in Holywell since the Middle Ages.

Camellia

Camellus, the Latin form of Kamel, after Georg Joseph Kamel, a Jesuit botanist in Manila.

Phyllis

Foliage.

Lorna

R. D. Blackmore made up Lorna for Lorna Doone (1869), from Lorne in Argyll.

Agatha

Good, ἀγαθή in Greek. Agatha Christie (1890-1976) disappeared for eleven days in December 1926.

Benedicta

Blessed.

Tabitha

Gazelle, in Aramaic.

Ottoline

Wealth, fortune. Lady Ottoline Morrell filled Garsington Manor with Bloomsbury writers during the World War I.

Hildegard

From hild, battle, and gard, enclosure. Hildegard of Bingen composed more than seventy chants.

Eustacia

Fruitful.

Perdita

Lost. The baby left on the Bohemian coast in The Winter’s Tale.

Alma

Nourishing. After the Battle of the Alma in 1854, British parents used the river’s title for their girls.

Cornelia

Horn. Asked about her jewels, Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, pointed at her two sons and said they are her jewels.

Deborah

Bee.

Serena

Serene, from Latin serenus.

Olivia

Symbolizing peace, Olivia is the olive.

Christabel

From Christ and bella, beautiful, and the poem Coleridge left unfinished.

Sarah

Lady, princess. Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) played Hamlet in Paris at the age of fifty-four.

Primrose

First rose.

Blanche

White. Blanche of Castile ruled France twice as regent for her son Louis IX.

Viola

Violet. Viola spends most of Twelfth Night dressed like boy, as Cesario.

Mehitabel

God makes happy.

Estella

Star. Dickens’s Estella is raised by Miss Havisham to break men’s hearts.

Julia

Youthful. Julia Ward Howe composed The Battle Hymn of the Republic in one night at Willard’s Hote.

Helena

Helena means ‘torch’. Napoleon spent his six last years on Saint Helena in the South Atlantic.

Loveday

Day of reconciliation. Cornish families used the medieval loveday, a set day for ending feuds, for girls.

Euphrosyne

Euphrosyne is pronounced as yoo-FROS-ih-nee and is meaning ‘mirth, merriment’. She is one of the three Graces.

Daphne

Symbolizing victory, Daphne is the laurel itself.

Patience

Patience.

Gwendolen

From gwen, white, and dolen, ring. Gwendolen Fairfax will only marry an Ernest in The Importance of Being Earnest.

Arabella

Yielding to prayer, from Latin orabilis. Arabella Fermor was the real girl in Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.

Flavia

Golden, yellow-haired.

Louisa

Famous battle. In 1868 Louisa May Alcott published Little Women.

Dolores

Sorrows.

Amethyst

Not drunk.

Ariadne

From the Cretan adnos, most holy. Ariadne handed Theseus a ball of thread to find his way out of the Labyrinth.

Anastasia

Resurrection. Grand Duchess Anastasia was the youngest daughter of Nicholas II and was shot with her family.

Judith

Jewish woman.

Melissa

Bee, in Greek.

Seraphina

Fiery ones, from the seraphim, and saraph, to burn.

Pamela

All honey. Sir Philip Sidney invented it for Arcadia.

Bronwen

White breast, in Welsh.

Clementine

Merciful. Clementine Hozier married Winston Churchill.

Miranda

Worthy of admiration, and a moon of Uranus.

Theresa

Harvester. Maria Theresa ruled the Habsburg lands during forty years.

Valeria

Strength.

Emily

Emily is from Aemilius, rival. Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights as Ellis Bell.

Guinevere

Gwenhwyfar in Welsh, gwen, white, and sebara, phantom. In Tennyson’s Idylls of the King she ends her life in a nunnery at Almesbury in Wiltshire.

Magnolia

After Pierre Magnol, a botanist in Montpellier.

Griselda

Grey battle, and Chaucer’s wife.

Temperance

Moderation.

Aurora

Dawn, and Aurora Leigh, the poet in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s verse novel.

Angharad

Angharad is from Welsh and has a meaning that I love, much love.

Portia

Hog.

Sophronia

Self-controlled, sensible.

Alexandra

Defender of men. Alexandra of Denmark became the bride of the future Edward VII.

Ernestine

Ernestine means serious and is from German ernst, earnestness.

Eulalia

Sweetly speaking.

Morwenna

Maiden. In Cornwall it survives in a parish, Morwenstow.

Jane

God is gracious.

Zenobia

Zenobia is pronounced as zuh-NOH-bee-uh and is meaning life of Zeus. As ruler of Palmyra she seized Egypt from Rome.

Berenice

Bringing victory.

Camilla

Young ceremonial attendant. In the Aeneid she is a Volscian warrior who runs so fast she won’t bend the wheat.

Cora

Maiden. Cora Munro dies in The Last of the Mohicans (1826).

Frederica

Peaceful ruler.

Fiammetta

Little fire.

Ulrica

Heritage, power.

Rebecca

Rebecca is from Hebrew and is meaning to bind.

Priscilla

Ancient. Priscilla Mullins became the wife of John Alden.

Hedwig

Battle, fight.

Philadelphia

Brotherly love, a city and a girl’s given name in 1700s England.

Alethea

Truth. Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel, collected paintings and marbles with her husband.

Vivian

Alive. Spelled Vivien? Same root, Latin vivus.

Sabrina

Sabrina is the Latin title of the River Severn. In Milton’s Comus (1634) she comes up from the river as a water nymph.

Amanda

Worthy of love.

Marigold

Mary’s gold.

Philippa

Friend of horses. Philippa of Hainault begged Edward III to spare the Burghers of Calais.