I just returned home from a week-long trip to our biggest city and its surrounding area to teach a 3-day art workshop, and as always I kept my ears open for names. I was excited by some of the ones I found. Here goes:
Girls:
[name]Delia[/name]–a little sister to 3-year-old [name]Mollie[/name]. I thought they made a sweet sibset, and [name]Delia[/name], on-trend with some of the sweet older names like [name]Celia[/name]/[name]Cecilia[/name], is lovely.
[name]Isabelita[/name]–one of my cashiers, a lady perhaps in her later fifties. This is an [name]Isabel[/name]/[name]Isabella[/name] variation I hadn’t considered before.
[name]Mercy[/name]–another cashier. A name I hear about more than I actually see in real life.
Oletta–a middle-aged lady with several married daughters. Their family, though not Catholic, passes the first name [name]Mary[/name] from mother to daughter, but each [name]Mary[/name] goes by her middle name. Thus, [name]Mary[/name] Oletta has a daughter named [name]Mary[/name] [name]Aspen[/name], whom we know as [name]Aspen[/name]. I also met a second daughter, Calita. I don’t know the spelling of Calita, but that’s how it sounds.
Guys:
[name]Duncan[/name]–yet another cashier, a young man probably in his twenties. I don’t know if I’ve ever met a real-life [name]Duncan[/name], so his name tag made me happy.
[name]Jasper[/name]–another twentyish young man, a preacher’s son, and my first real-life [name]Jasper[/name] though I’ve heard of several others and have seen the name rise pretty dramatically in the statistics.
[name]Lucian[/name]–OK, I was very excited about my first real-life [name]Lucian[/name] (pronounced LOO-shun.) He’s about seven, a cute chubby little black-haired fellow, and has a younger brother named [name]Merrill[/name]. I thought that was a pretty cool sibset, too.
[name]Marcel[/name]–I didn’t meet [name]Marcel[/name]. When I got to meet his 3-day-old stepbrother, I asked for all the sibling names and was surprised by the firstborn son’s name. [name]Marcel[/name] seems rather exotic next to [name]Andrew[/name], [name]Patrick[/name], [name]Rebecca[/name] and [name]Stephanie[/name]. But I am not sure which are the stepsiblings, which probably accounts for the different naming taste. Or maybe [name]Marcel[/name] was named after a special relative, etc.
[name]Rowan[/name]–the 3-day-old baby boy. [name]Rowan[/name] was a surprise baby, and the family is ecstatic. Older sister [name]Stephanie[/name] suggested the name, which I prefer on a boy so was happy to see.
[name]Titus[/name]–one of my art students, probably about twelve, younger brother to [name]Kayla[/name]. Ironically, [name]Titus[/name] is also the name of the friends’ pug at whose house I stayed. But I prefer it on the boy. 
Name collecting always excites me, so I wanted to share! Any thoughts?
good names!