Arlo

Arlo is a name with scuffed boots and a guitar case leaning against the wall. Of uncertain etymology — possibly from the Irish place name Aherlow, meaning between two highlands, or from an Anglo-Saxon word for a fortified hill — it spent decades as an artifact of the American folk revival before it became a first name in general circulation. Arlo Guthrie, son of Woody, carried it into the counterculture with Alice's Restaurant and kept it alive through the decades when it might otherwise have gone dormant.

The name now sits at rank 146 on the American boys chart, lifted by a broader appetite for short, vintage, slightly unconventional picks that feel individual without being invented. Arlo also had a moment as the small dinosaur in Pixar's The Good Dinosaur, which introduced it to a generation of children before they were old enough to know about Guthrie. Both associations pull in the same direction: something earnest, something wandering, something that turns out to be braver than it first appeared.

Two syllables — AR-lo — the R giving the opening a slight warmth and the O closing cleanly and open. It sits naturally alongside Diego or Evan or Bryson, names that share its easy, slightly literary quality. The Arlo you know probably takes the long way home on purpose and has a good reason for it that he'll tell you about eventually, if you ask.