Vanessa, Cedric, and Pamela, Author-Coined Names

What’s the common bond that links the names Vanessa, Cedric, and Pamela? They’re all names coined by famous authors. Vanessa was invented by Jonathan Swift as a pet name for his lover Esther Van Homrigh.The 16th-century poetSir Phillip Sidney coined the name Pamela for his pastoral romance, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia,” possibly from a combination of Greek words meaning “all honey.” And Sir Walter Scott, in his novel Ivanhoe, introduced the character of Cedric the Saxon—either a misunderstanding or an alteration of the much older Anglo-Saxon name Cerdic. This is part of a complete episode.