Parade of 1000 Arabian Nights

I discovered another "made for me" anime, Natsume's Book of Friends. While it has some of the same tropes and structure of a magic girl series, the primary appeal is that the story revolves around monsters (yokai) and classic ghost types of Japanese folklore, many which are unknown to me.

These days, to my ongoing joy, I am seeing a lot of interest in fairy tales and folklore entertainment. Shows like Grim and Disney's Once Upon a Time, and movies like Spirited Away, are the most prominent, but anime and manga also have a wealth of folklore fantasy, and some of these are top-notch. The tales collected by the Grimm brothers, The Firebird and other Russian tales, and 1000 Arabian Nights interested me in childhood. Not until later did I read Hans Christian Anderson, although I was generally familiar with those stories. I also recall learning a bunch of folklore from the plots of ballet. (As a little girl, Ballerina was my Princess.)

It's not just that we're more connected to other cultures these days than we were in the 20th century. It feels to me that an audience for folklore has grown. Is it because we want new (to us) fantasy territory to play in? Or are we looking for something?

What would your name be if you were born today?

http://time.com/3856405/baby-name-popularity/#

This is a fun interactive where you put in your first name and year of birth, and it generates the names of equal ranking this year and other years. Arielle is my name of equal ranking... I would never have guessed. It's because of the spelling, I'm sure; my name is common in the American spelling version, and common as spelled in romance language countries. Also, this generator is assuming U.S.

Bookmarking for when I need a good name in a different time period. I actually had this question already, and answered it the hard way.