Alexander

In 336 B.C. a twenty-year-old inherited the kingdom of Macedon, and within a decade had remade the known world — Alexander the Great pushed his army from Greece across Persia, Egypt, and into India before dying at thirty-three in Babylon, leaving behind some twenty cities named Alexandria. His name, Alexandros (a defender of men, from the Greek alexein and aner), has never quite cooled since.

Alexander arrives with marble in its pockets: Greek kings, Russian tsars (Alexander I, II, and III), eight popes, the playwright Alexander Pope, the songwriter Alexander Hamilton (whose face on the U.S. ten-dollar bill and whose subsequent Lin-Manuel Miranda musical have done much for the name's twenty-first-century revival), the inventor Alexander Graham Bell, the painter Alexander Calder. Four syllables give parents the luxury of nicknames — Alex, Xander, Sasha (the Russian short form), Lex, Sander, Sandy, Al — which may partly explain the name's durable perch in the SSA top 30 for the entire modern charting era. It currently sits at rank twenty-seven and has not been outside the top 30 in over half a century.

For all its gravitas, the name wears surprisingly well on small children; the long form waits patiently, like a suit hanging in a closet, for the adult who'll eventually need it. Famous bearers also include Alexander Skarsgård, Alexander McQueen, and Alexander Wang. Pairs with everything — classical (Alexander James, Alexander Henry) or modern (Alexander Wren, Alexander Cruz). Distinguished, weighty, structurally permanent. A name with marble in its name and an entire wardrobe of nicknames waiting in the wings.