I met someone named
Odessa once. It's a Ukranian city, but still sounds like a good name. It also follows the city-name trend (
Madison,
Austin,
Dallas,
Cheyenne,
Paris). A grad student in the Slavic Dept. (I have a BA in Russian) named his daughter
Eleanora- another interesting choice. I know 3 kids in one grade that have some form of
Alex for their names, and several others, so that has probably started falling.
An interesting ancient name is
Gleb, he was a prince and now a saint.
He and his brother
Boris didn't fight their brother Sviatalpolk when their father died. Sviatalpolk wanted to make sure none of his brothers would try to get rid of him, he had all of them killed.
Boris and
Gleb didn't fight, so they ended up martyrs in the Russian Orthodox Church.