I'm only slightly younger than you, and I think you're very right, we grew up with few likable female characters around. And I feel the idea of the meme is precisely that you pick the first names that come to your mind.

Also, you probably don't know Katharine Hilbery, who teaches herself mathematics and astronomy in the night and hides from her parents that she doesn't 'get' poetry. Night and Day is supposed to be one of V Woolf's worst books but I love it to pieces.