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A few of the names on my list are unusable in real life, but then this is just a list of female names I like; there's no human child on the way.
"Scholastica" would indeed be a lot to hang on a child. It would come with heavy expectations, more so than even a virtue name. And yet a famous saint wore the name memorably enough that it comes down to us today, nearly 1,500 years after her death. St. Scholastica was an abbess and the sister of St. Benedict. He founded the Benedictine Order; she founded the Benedictine nuns.
The name needs no etymological parsing; it is what it looks like. It suggests scholarly pursuits and achievements, and indeed Scholastica is the patron of education and books.
Few people throughout history seem to have borne the name. One website, whose claims are not easily verified, alleges that the name peaked in popularity in 1914, with a grand total of five babies given the name that year.
Sure, if you want to give your girl a scholarly air, you can always give her a name like, say, Irene or Helen or Cordelia -- names that prompt someone to say "I'll bet she has a bookshelf" without the expectations that come with Scholastica. But still, can you imagine a precocious little Scholastica Jones showing up for her first day at school? She sounds like she'd be the main character in a novel that's both gripping and fun, and she's the kind of girl I would have loved to know in school.
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