Anastasia

From the Greek anastasis — resurrection — and given in the early Christian centuries to girls born near Easter, as a name for something returning to the light after a long absence. It was carried by Russian grand duchesses and early Christian saints, one of whom was beheaded under Diocletian, before crossing into Western imagination through Romanov mythology: the lost princess, the open historical question, the girl who might have survived when everything around her did not.

For most American parents, Anastasia arrives already wrapped in that legend and in the shimmer of the 1997 animated film that sent her dancing across a ballroom in shades of deep blue and amber light. The name has climbed steadily as parents have grown more comfortable with four-syllable names that feel unambiguously grand and historically serious. It currently sits at rank 166, keeping company with Evangeline and Arabella in the category of names too beautiful to abbreviate without a small sense of loss — though Stasia, Ana, and Nastia all exist as perfectly serviceable daily options.

Four measured syllables, each carrying its own weight before the whole name opens into a final bright a that leaves everything feeling unfinished in the best possible way. It pairs with shorter, firmer middle names: Anastasia June, Anastasia Claire, Anastasia Rose. Sisters named Serenity or Alexandra share its imperial register. The girl who grows up as Anastasia usually knows the whole story of the Romanovs by the time she is eight and has developed genuinely complicated feelings about it — which is exactly the right response to inheriting that much narrative before you are old enough to have asked for it.