Today, on the eve of Oscar night, ABBY SANDEL, creator of one of our favorite blogs, the witty and informative appellationmountain.net, looks back through the annals of Oscar history and unearths an interesting group of winning male winner names.

　　Plenty of today’s most popular names conjure up Hollywood at its most glamorous, especially for girls. I’ve met plenty of toddlers named Audrey, Ava and Natalie. But ever since Kevin Nealon called his son Gable–as in Clark–I’ve been wondering about screen legend names for boys.

　　Here’s a short list culled from Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor nominees and winners, and the characters they played, from the 1920s through today.

　　LEADING MEN

　　Some of these are household names, while others are more obscure. A few have surprising roots–Denzel, for example, can be found in use in Medieval England. But all share a certain dashing quality.

　　ALEC

　　ANTHONY

　　CLARK

　　COOPER

　　DENHOLM

　　DENZEL

　　DJIMON

　　EMIL (Emil Jennings won the very first Best Actor award in the 1920s)FOREST

　　GABLE

　　GEORGE

　　GREGORY

　　HEATH

　　HOLDEN

　　KENNETH

　　JAVIER

　　JOAQUIN

　　JUDE

　　LEONARDO

　　LIAM

　　LIONEL

　　MARCH (Fredric March was a successful actor from the 1920s to the 50s)NICHOLSON

　　OLIVIER

　　OMAR

　　REX

　　RIVER

　　SPENCER

　　VIGGO

　　WILLEM

　　CHARACTERS

　　Fagin, Hannibal and a few other obvious bad guys aren’t on the list, but be warned–not every character is a saint. The most surprising Oscar-worthy appellation? The homespun Homer led to nominations for at least four diferent actors over the years.

　　ATTICUS (The literary powerhouse To Kill a Mockingbird was also a big screen success, with Gregory Peck playing Atticus Finch.)CHANCE (From 1979’s Being There.)COLE (Haley Joel Osmond‘s psychic grade-schooler in The Sixth Sense.)COSMO (Roland Young played Cosmo in 1937’s Topper.)DJAY (Terrence Howard’s character in 2005’s Hustle and Flow.)ELLIOT (Richard Dreyfus played Elliot in 1977’s The Goodbye Girl.)EZRA (Both Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier have played Ezras.)GARRETT (Jack Nicholson’s role in 1983’s Terms of Endearment.)GOWAN (Tom Conti’s role in 1983’s Reuben, Reuben.)HOMER (A Hollywood favorite through the ages–Mickey Rooney played a Homer in 1942; 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives included a Homer; Sidney Poitier won the Oscar for his Homer in Lillies of the Field and Melvyn Douglas played a Homer in Hud.)JETT (James Dean was nominated posthumously for his performance as Jett in Giant.)JUDAH (Charleston Heston nabbed the statue playing Judah Ben-Hur in 1959.)JULES (Samuel L. Jackson‘s Pulp Fiction role.)LASZLO (Ralph Fiennes played Laszlo in The English Patient.)MACAULEY (James Stewart’s Oscar-winning character in The Philadelphia Story was Macauley Conner; however Macauley answered to Mike.)MILO (Michael Caine’s character from 1972’s Sleuth.)NIKONAR (Christopher Walken’s character from 1978’s The Deer Hunter.)OTTO (Kevin Kline’s character in A Fish Called Wanda.)PETER (Clark Gable won his first Oscar playing Peter Warne in It Happened One Night.)RAY (from the Ray Charles biopic,)RUFUS (Burl Ives won for Best Supporting Actor as Rufus in 1958’s The Big Country.)__