Anna

Anna is the name in its pure state. It descends from the Hebrew Hannah, grace, and has traveled essentially intact across Russian, Italian, German, Greek, and English, a genuine pan-continental classic attached to empresses, saints, and Tolstoy's most famous tragic heroine stepping from a Moscow train. The name has been in continuous American top-100 use for well over a century and currently sits around the top 94. Two identical open syllables, symmetrical on the page and in the ear. Anna reads as serene and intelligent, unperformed, the sort of name attached to people who read in their first language and a second one too, calm without ever being dull.