Names of strong and interesting women in history?

[snowrevolution]

Fishing for ideas really, in case DC2 is a girl. Possible contenders include:

Emmeline (Pankhurst)
Florence (Nightingale)
Agatha (Christie)

Any other suggestions in this vein? Not so much into more obviously traditional names like Elizabeth.

Helena (Normanton - first married woman in UK to have a passport in her maiden name, and first woman to practise as a barrister)

I was coming here to say Amelia, but I see someone got there first.

Sophie (Scholl) - Munich White Rose student - executed by the Gestapo for her role in non violent resistance to the Nazis link

Marie Stopes for her role in sexual health and contraception etc

Odette (WW2 France)
Joan of Arc
Boadicea

OK maybe not! There are some good ones above.

Vita (Sackville West)
Virginia (Woolf)
Mary (Anning - fossil lady)

Artemisia (Gentileschi)...maybe not though!

Hypatia of Alexandria. Came to a bit of an unpleasant end, though.

Lots came to a nasty end.

Grace is lovely.....Darling would be a bit much as a middle name maybe.

Aphra Behn First novelist in the English language, spy, anti slaver campaigner and all round awesome woman.

How about Mary.....Mother of Jesus, Mary Magdelene, Mary Queen of Scots.

Catherine the Great.

cornelia (corrie) ten boom concentration camp survivor
esther biblical persian queen stood up to her husband at risk of her own life
octavia hill philanthropist housing reformer
elizbeth fry prison reformer
harriet beecher stowe writer
arabella mansfield first female lawyer in the US
magdalen for mary magdalen

There are some fab names here. If you want something plainer you could have a
Charlotte, Emily or Anne (Bronte)
Jane (Austen)

Juno? Means "queen of heaven" and in Roman mythology Juno was the the protector of women and of marriage...

Christabel (Pankhurst)
Rachel (Carson 'Silent Spring')
Harriet nee Araminta (Tubman - underground railroad)
Maria (Montessori)
Valentina (Tereshkova - first woman in space)
'Phyllis Wheatley' (name given to her when she was transported from Africa at age 7 into slavery; poet and living proof used by abolitionists to show that black people were not intellectually inferior to whites)
Maya (Angelou)
Juana Ines (de la Cruz - writer and campaigner for the right of women to education, born 1651 in Mexico)

Eve (Arnold) Photographer and co-founder of Magnum
Emma (Goldman) Anarchist
Georgia (O'Keefe) Artist
Clara (Barton) Founder of US Red Cross
Florence (Nightingale) Nursing and also invented pie charts
Cicely (Saunders) Founder of the hospice movement
Coco (Chanel) Fashion
Helena (Rubenstein) Entrepeneur
Anne (Frank) Writer
Victoria - Queen
Rachel (Beer) First female editor of Sunday Times and Observer

Rosa Parks

Ada (Lovelace)

Glad Mary Seacole has already had a mention

Marie (Curie)

Maryam /Mary
Asiya
Khadija
Fatima
Ayesha
Saffiya
Sumayyah
Nusaybah
Aafia (siddique not eastenders)

Boudicca
Scheherazade

Salome Alexandra, Queen of Judea (and last to stand up to the Romans, legends surround her that she was so wonderful that she caused miracles for her people).

Irena Sendler, saved over 2000 children during WW2

Gwendolen, [nicked from Wiki] legendary ruler of Britain, whose life is described in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. According to Geoffrey, she was the wife of King Locrinus of the Britons until she defeated him in battle and took on the leadership of Britain herself.

Mary (Seacole) as important as Florence Nightingale
Rosa (parks) Civil Rights activist
Millicent (Fawcett)
Emily (davison) Suffregettes

oh and Norma (L. McCorvey) otherwise known as Jane Roe who the woman ho had the biggest hand in making Abortion legal in America

Rosa Luxemburg

'Those who do not move, do not notice their chains'

Marie for both Stopes and Curie

Has anyone said Dido (Queen of Carthage) yet? - pity the name now makes you think of Dido the singer :(
(but her real name is Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong....)

Love Rosalind (Franklin) and Emmeline (Pankhurst). I tried out Emmeline on DH but he wasn't having any of it.

Favourite artists: Barbara Hepworth, Louise Bourgeois.
Writers: Donna Tartt, Zadie Smith, Antonia Byatt, Nancy Mitford, Jessica (Decca) Mitford, Irene Nemirovsky, Margaret Atwood, Dorothy Parker, Katherine Mansfield, Virgina Woolf. And Simone de Beauvoir.