Amanda

Amanda was a gift from the Latin poets, a gerundive meaning "she who must be loved." The Roman grammarians coined it the way they coined Miranda, as a quality elevated into a name. It slept for centuries before seventeenth-century English playwrights rediscovered it for their pining heroines, and then truly bloomed in America in the 1970s and 80s, when it ran at the very top of the charts. Today, ranked 496, Amanda is riding the quiet dignity of its own aftermath, a name many mothers share with their daughters' best friends. Three syllables of warmth, ease, and an unmistakable decade in its grain.