Dark / Pretty Names

So I recently bought a snake and have been coming up for names for her. While doing this, I figured some of these names would be interesting for stories. So I thought I'd share them! Plus, I still haven't found the perfect name for my snake! I'm looking for names that are a little dark but still elegant and pretty. Maybe even a little witchy. Here are some of the one's I've got:

Meridia (Mer-id-ee-ah)
Leixia (Lay-sha)
Aya (Ay-yah or eye-yah)
Midna (Mid- na)
Calypso (Ka-lip-so)
Iona (eye-oh-nah or ee-oh-nah)
Hecate (Heck-ate-ee)
Nyx (Nix)


So if you have some cool names you'd like to suggest or show off, please share them! I'm looking for female names but if you have some dark male names share those too!

And if you're looking for a dark name to use in your story, go ahead and look through these

Aw. Congrats on the snake, one day I'd like to have an albino cornsnake. :3
Those are some awesome names you've got there! Personally I love Midna (did you get it from Twilight Princess?) XD
I personally can't think of any off the top of my head, but here's a few resources I've used to help with "dark" names:
http://ultimategothguide.blogspot.com/2 ... s.html?m=1
http://www.behindthename.com
On the website above, clicking on names that are in different languages can give you some unique, kind-of-dark names.
Hope I could help! And congrats on your new pet!

Thanks @AttackOfTheFlash

Cornsnakes are so nice, I almost got a snow corn :3

And yeah, I did get it from Twilight Princess I love that game so much!

I'd be careful about relying on the "foreign language = dark-sounding name" thing. That can slide really quickly into some Unfortunate Implications, whether the person with a dark-sounding name is the villain or serves some other role.

A lot of the names mentioned in the original post actually don't have super-dark origins. Nyx is the Greek goddess of night, yes, but she's not bad, or really dark, or evil in any way. Hecate is the goddess of the crossroads, change, and the unknown—and is also known as the threefold goddess or the goddess of witches and paganism.

If you're looking for mythology-inspired dark names—there are a lot of people in mythology that weren't exactly pillars of greatness. Helen of Troy, for example, is quite the dark figure due to what she brought on the city, despite the fact that her name means "torch" or "light". Tiamat, a Mesopotamian deity, is considered to be embodied chaos—not so much dark, as she's also considered to be the chaos of creation, but she's certainly intimidating.

Like I said, there's a lot out there. You might not want to rely solely on mythology at all, and you might want to mess with phonetics to try and find your own version of a dark name, but it's probably not a good idea to rely solely on other languages, either.

To add my resources to the pile: Fantasy Name Generators has a lot under their Fantasy heading that might fit what you're looking for. Everything from goblins to witches to aliens to heroic horses.

I'd also do a quick google search on all the names, to see who's associated with that already. Midna's already been mentioned, but quite a few others on this list are familiar to me.

I'm wondering what, exactly, you mean by "sounds witchy". Witches have a huge variety of names and unless you provide some specifics about what names a name sound witchy to you, it's very hard to pick names out.

It would also be nice to know what culture you're looking to pull from. Greek and Roman names sound different from German and Russian, while English is a little bit of everything while still having its own unique names. People would be named based on the culture they were born into, which is another reason to not just take foreign names to sound dark (on top of what Ark's already pointed out).

Brynhilda
Gyda,
Angrboda.

Just some suggestions