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Two little-used Celtic beauties & two Hebrew ones.
Arianwen - the name of a (legendary?)5th century Welsh chieftain's daughter. From arian (silver) plus [g]wen (feminine of [g]wyn: "white").
Vannora (actually, the book says Vanora - sorry!) - a Scottish Gaelic form of Guinevere and therefore a version of that much overused Cornish version Jennifer.
Levana - Hebrew: "moon".
Livna - Hebrew: "white".WDYT?

This message was edited 1/29/2008, 5:36 AM

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I like:Gwen and Levana
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I love Arianwen, but none of the others,
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Levana not only means "moon", it's also the female form of "white". As for the second name, the correct form is Livnat--I'm not sure what it means, but it might be derived from "white".
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Do you know how Vanora is pronounced? "VAN-or-a" or "van-OR-a"?
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I only discovered the name this week in a book. I see, however, that it's already on the database on this site as a "reader-submitted name" - the pronunciation given disappoints me a little, and I can't fathom the "noir" bit unless it's another way of saying "nor":
Pronounced: Vay-noir-ah Contributed by Kirstie on 11/8/2006

Vanora- white wave
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Arianwen - -not a fan
Vannora -don't like it
Levana - nice
Livna - can't see it as a name because there is a town called Livno near here and there are many not very nice jokes about the name.
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I like Arianwen alright and I think Livna is absolutely gorgeous!
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I like Vannora.
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Livna is sweet, I like it.Have you got sources for the others?
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Arianwen (and Arianrhod) are both in "A Dictionary of First Names" by Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges (OUP, 1988).
I came across levana on the Net, but it appears to be genuine, and used in Israel. (I googled; in fact, when in doubt I google images!).
I first came across Vanora (sorry, I misspelled it earlier) this week - in "A Dictionary of First Names" (1990; ISBN 1 85605 3407)under Jennifer (page 133) as a Scottish variant. There's no author's name on the title page, but the verso says Copywright 1990 J. Cresswell. It looks like a well-researched book, not given to flights of fancy.
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Levana is indeed legit. It has been used for centuries, sometimes with the secular Luna.
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Cool, thanks :-)I google for images to verify usage too - glad it's not just me!
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