Chronicles of Narnia Baby Names: Honest Picks from C. S. Lewis's World

Step through the wardrobe and you meet kings and talking mice, witches and fauns, schoolchildren and centaurs. What you may not notice on a first read is how many of the people in C. S. Lewis’s seven books carry names a modern parent could actually use. That is no accident. Lewis was a medievalist who read Latin and Greek for pleasure and reached for real linguistic roots—English, Latin, Greek, and even Turkish—when he named his world. The result is a fantasy series whose human characters mostly sound like real people, which makes Narnia an unusually rich and honest hunting ground for a baby name.

This guide sorts the cast the way a careful parent actually needs it sorted: the names that are genuinely wearable for a child in the real world, the bold vintage gambles worth considering, and the ones to admire on the page but quietly leave there. A creature name or a coined villain’s title can be magnificent in a book and impossible on a kindergarten roll call, and pretending otherwise does no one any favors. So let us be honest about which is which.

The Pevensie children: the most wearable names of all

The four siblings who first tumble into Narnia are not exotic at all, and that is precisely their charm. Lewis gave the Pevensies plain, dependable English names—the kind that have stood on baptismal records for centuries—and they remain the safest, most usable choices in the whole series.

Lucy is the heart of the books and arguably the heart of this list. It comes from the Latin lux, meaning “light,” and it fits the youngest Pevensie, the first to believe and the last to doubt. Lucy has never truly left the charts and is thoroughly fashionable again; she currently ranks No. 34. Bright, soft, and instantly readable, she is the model of a timeless girl’s name that happens to come gift-wrapped in literary pedigree.

Susan, the eldest girl, derives from the Hebrew shoshannah, “lily.” She has a gentler trajectory at the moment—Susan has been quietly resting since her mid-century heyday—but she carries a warmth and a meaning as lovely as any flower name on trend today. For a family drawn to a vintage revival, Susan is ripe for rediscovery.

Peter, the High King, needs little introduction: from the Greek petros, “rock,” the name carries apostolic weight and unshakeable solidity. Peter ranks No. 192 and remains one of the steadiest classic boy names in English, never flashy, never dated.

Edmund is the quiet triumph of the four. An Old English name meaning “rich protector” (from ead, “wealth, fortune,” and mund, “protection”), it belonged to Anglo-Saxon kings and saints long before it belonged to the Pevensie who betrayed his siblings and then earned his redemption. Edmund has a distinguished, slightly under-the-radar quality today—a true British heirloom name with a built-in arc of growth. Edmund the Just is one of the great rehabilitations in children’s literature, and the name wears that depth well.

Kings, princes & royals of Narnia

Narnia is, after all, a monarchy, and its line of kings supplies some of the most interesting names in the series—though here the wearable and the storybook-only sit side by side, and it pays to know the difference.

Caspian is the standout, and he gets his own section below because he has done something almost no other fantasy name has managed. For now, simply note that Prince (later King) Caspian X is the rare invented-sounding name that is genuinely royal in feel and fully usable in practice.

Cornelius, Caspian’s half-dwarf tutor, is a real Roman family name (a gens name borne by consuls and a New Testament centurion), traditionally linked to the Latin cornu, “horn.” It is grand, scholarly, and entirely legitimate—a bold strong choice for parents who love a long, dignified name with a ready nickname in Corny or Neil. Cornelius slipped off the most popular charts a generation ago, which is exactly where its antique charm comes from.

Frank, the London cabbie who becomes the very first King of Narnia in The Magician’s Nephew, proves Lewis’s democratic streak: an ordinary, honest man crowned the founding monarch. The name is a true vintage staple—short for Francis, “Frenchman” or “free man”—and Frank ranks No. 468, riding the broad revival of plainspoken grandfather names. It is wholly wearable and quietly noble in its Narnian context.

Then come the kings best admired from a distance. Rilian, Caspian’s lost son in The Silver Chair, and Tirian, the last king of Narnia in The Last Battle, are both lovely on the page—melodic, vaguely Celtic, clearly invented—but they read as storybook-only. They lack the established footing that lets a name function in a classroom; a child named Rilian would spend a lifetime spelling and explaining, and Tirian, for all its noble ring, sits a hair too close to Tristan and Tiberius without belonging to either family. Beautiful coinages, but coinages all the same—the kind of names that work because the surrounding pages do the heavy lifting.

Cor and his twin Corin from The Horse and His Boy sit in between. Cor (the boy raised as Shasta, true heir of Archenland) is too slight to stand alone—it reads as a fragment. Corin, his boxing-mad brother, fares a little better and could pass as an unusual short form, but neither has the substance of an Edmund or a Caspian. File them under affectionate curiosities.

Bold vintage deep cuts

For parents who want something with genuine roots but real daring, Narnia’s supporting cast offers several antique gems—names that are real, old, and almost startling in their boldness.

Eustace is the connoisseur’s pick. From the Greek Eustachios, “fruitful” or “steadfast,” it belonged to a martyred Roman saint and several English noblemen. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Eustace Clarence Scrubb begins as a sneering brat—Lewis’s famous opening line jokes that he “almost deserved” the name—and is transformed, literally undragoned, into one of the saga’s true heroes. That redemption gives the name an unexpected warmth. Eustace is a genuinely daring literary resurrection for the brave-hearted parent.

Digory, the boy hero of The Magician’s Nephew who grows up to be the wise old Professor Kirke, has a soft, antique, distinctly Cornish flavor (it appears in old West Country records, possibly from desgarat, “strayed one”). It is obscure enough to feel like a discovery and gentle enough to actually use—an offbeat English deep cut with real history behind it.

Polly Plummer, Digory’s companion, is a pet form of Mary that has graduated into a name of its own—cheerful, retro, and rising on the same wave that has lifted Molly and Sadie. Jill Pole, the practical heroine of The Silver Chair and The Last Battle, is short for Gillian (ultimately from Juliana). Both are crisp mid-century English names with plenty of charm and zero pretension.

Helen deserves a mention here too: she is Frank the cabbie’s wife, magically called into Narnia to reign beside him as its first Queen, Helen the Valiant. From the Greek, “torch” or “bright,” Helen is a luminous classic with Homeric weight—and a charming bit of Narnian trivia that her ordinary London name became a founding crown.

The girls of Narnia, by meaning

Gathered together, the female names of the series are remarkably usable. Lucy, “light” (Latin). Susan, “lily” (Hebrew). Polly, “star of the sea” by way of Mary. Jill, “youthful” by way of Juliana. Helen, “bright torch” (Greek). Five real names, five clean meanings—an unusually grounded roster for a fantasy world.

The lone invented entry is Aravis, the proud Calormene runaway turned heroine of The Horse and His Boy. Let us be straight: Aravis is not a traditional name with a documented etymology—Lewis coined it to sound exotic and aristocratic against his pseudo-Persian Calormen setting. But it is undeniably pretty, with a fashionable -is ending that sits comfortably beside trendier modern picks, and it carries one of the strongest female arcs in the books. If you love it, love it for what it is: a beautiful invention rather than an inheritance. That honesty is the whole point of choosing well.

Caspian: the Narnia name that actually made the leap

Every fantasy series produces a handful of names parents wish they could use. Almost none of them graduate from the page to the actual charts. Caspian is the great exception—the Narnia name that genuinely crossed over—and understanding why tells you a great deal about how a fictional name becomes a real one.

For most of the twentieth century, Caspian was a place, not a person: the Caspian Sea, the world’s largest inland body of water, lying between Europe and Asia and taking its name in turn from the ancient Caspi people who lived along its shores. Lewis borrowed that grand, slightly oceanic geography for his sea-faring prince, and for decades the name stayed firmly inside the books, the property of readers and no one else. Then, gradually and then quickly, parents began to use it. Today Caspian has quietly crossed onto the contemporary charts—a real, climbing boy’s name, no longer a curiosity but a legitimate choice with a soft, watery sophistication. A name that once meant only “that prince in the third book” now belongs, quietly, to flesh-and-blood children.

So what let Caspian graduate when Rilian and Tirian did not? Three things, and they form a useful test for any mythical or fictional name you are weighing. First, real-sounding phonology: Caspian’s rhythm echoes established names like Sebastian, Cassius, and Casper, so the ear accepts it instantly. Second, a clean, evocative meaning: the Caspian Sea anchors it to real geography, giving the name substance rather than the empty prettiness of a pure coinage. Third—and this is the one parents most often forget—no creature baggage. Caspian names a man, a king, a hero. It is not the name of a talking badger or a witch or a half-goat. A fictional name can only cross over if a real child could carry it without dragging a whole bestiary behind him.

That third criterion is the hidden hinge of this entire guide, and it sorts the rest of the cast for us automatically.

Admire but skip: the creatures, words & titles

Some of the most beloved names in Narnia belong to beings no child could ever really be. They are wonderful—and they belong on the page. Here, honestly, is why.

Aslan is the great lion, the Christ-figure who sings Narnia into being and dies and rises again. Lewis chose the name deliberately: aslan is simply the Turkish word for “lion,” and he wanted a name that meant exactly what the character was. It is a magnificent, resonant choice, and worth honoring as such—but precisely because it is so tightly bound to the divine lion of the series, it is not a name to place on a human child. The association is total. Admire it; do not borrow it.

Reepicheep, the gallant talking mouse who sails to the very edge of the world, is a delicious coinage and a perfect name for a valiant rodent—and a punishing one for a person. The same goes for Puddleglum, the gloomy Marsh-wiggle whose name is a word-portrait of his temperament, half “puddle” and half “glum”; Trumpkin and Trufflehunter, the loyal dwarf and the kindly badger of Prince Caspian, both built like affectionate animal nicknames; and Mr. Tumnus, the faun of that first famous lamppost meeting, whose name is charming on a goat-legged creature and entirely unmoored on anyone else. These are word-names and character-coinages, brilliant in context and unwearable out of it—and the very fact that they are so vivid is what makes them impossible to transplant.

The villains tempt for a different reason—their darkness—but the warning is the same. Jadis, the White Witch and self-styled Empress of the Lone Islands, has an undeniably edgy beauty (Lewis seems to have drawn on the French jadis, “long ago, of old”), but her backstory—she murdered every living thing in her own world with a single word—makes her a hard namesake to hand a daughter. Miraz, the usurping uncle who seizes Caspian’s throne, and Glozelle, his treacherous lord, are atmospheric but inseparable from their treachery. A brave parent might admire the sound; a wise one remembers the story attached to it.

What Narnia teaches the name-hunter

The deeper lesson of Lewis’s world is methodological. Because he built his names from genuine roots—Latin lux in Lucy, Old English ead-mund in Edmund, Greek in Peter and Eustace and Helen, Turkish in Aslan—Narnia is full of names that already sound real, because in the deepest sense they are. The fantasy is in the world, not the etymology.

That is also why the honest sorting matters. A great book name is not simply one you loved reading; it is one a real person can live inside—easy to say, clear in meaning, and free of baggage too heavy to carry. By that measure Narnia gives generously: the timeless Pevensies, the surprising Caspian, the daring Eustace and Digory, the bright Helen and Lucy. The lions and the witches and the Marsh-wiggles, meanwhile, we leave exactly where they belong—walking and talking among the trees, on the far side of the wardrobe door.