When senior Zelda Gilbert gave her name for a restaurant order, the cashier thought she wasn’t telling the truth.

“I ordered at Chick-Fil-A one time and they asked me what my name was,” Gilbert said. “I said, ‘Zelda,’ and the woman was like, ‘You’re lying.’ I offered to show her my passport.”

Gilbert is one of several college students whose unique name stands out in the campus directory. Scrolling through the sprawling list of Johns and Sophias, names like Lonán, Leif, and Ingelise are easy to overlook, but unmistakable when spotted.

For freshman Electra Fire, her name has always turned heads. 

“I have not heard of anyone else who knew someone with my name,” Fire said.

Fire’s parents, however, didn’t choose her name on account of its uniqueness. The name, which means “shining” in Greek, came from one of her great-great- grandparents. 

Fire’s middle name, “Uriela,” is just as deliberately chosen, and is Hebrew for “Flame of God.”

“My parents really wanted me to be rooted in God,” she said. “They wanted my name to be as well.”

Before she came to college, Fire said people would ask if she was named after the Marvel superhero, Elektra. Now they ask her if she is named after the Greek princess. 

Fire said her name often stumps people.“One time I went to a restaurant and they spelled it ‘Alequtra,’” Fire said. “They just aren’t expecting to hear it.”

Sophomore Lonán Mooney, originally from Donegal, Ireland, found a different solution to chronic restaurant misspellings.

“Since moving to America, I always say my name is Alex because I think it is the easiest name to recognize and get right,” Mooney said. 

If she’s getting to know someone, Mooney said she will introduce her real name, but she saves food service employees the trouble.

Even in Ireland, the name “Lonán” is rare. When it is used, it is often for men.

“It was always a weird name, even being home,” she said. “But it has always felt like me.”

Mooney’s dark hair and 5’1” stature fits her name, which means “little blackbird” in Gaelic, Mooney’s native language.

Gaelic, the native dialect of Ireland, was nearly eradicated during British rule but has become more popular since Ireland gained independence in 1921. Despite this, only about 2% of the population speaks it as a first language. Mooney is one of them.

“It is cool how I can speak the language after all those years of people trying to keep it alive,” she said.

For siblings senior Leif Andersen and sophomore Ingelise Andersen, names are a way of remembering the past.

“When Great-Grandpa Einar was a kid, he saved up money by selling milk, farming sugar beets and doing other odd-and-end chores in Denmark,” Leif Andersen said. “He saved up all this money and showed it to his dad when he turned 17. His dad broke down crying saying, ‘I’ve never seen that much money in my life, where did you get all of this?’ and Einar said, ‘I’m buying a ticket to America because I hear that I can actually do something with my life instead of being a serf.”

Einar Andersen settled in America, establishing a farmstead that has remained in the family for three generations.

Today the family still celebrates various Danish customs for marriages and holidays as a way of connecting to their heritage. For the Andersens’ father, Josh, names were another way to honor his family history. 

But for a young Ingelise Andersen, all she saw was inconvenience in her name. It took time to see its beauty.

“I was really annoyed because no one could say my name right,” she said. “I actually went by the name ‘Inga’ for a long time, and then as I got older I realized it meant something. It came from where my family started. So every time people talk about our names, I’m actually really proud of it now.”