Caleb

One of the two Israelite scouts who came back from surveying the promised land with a good report instead of a panicked one — Caleb in the Hebrew Bible is the man who keeps his nerve. The Hebrew Kalev has been glossed variously as "dog" (in the sense of faithful companion) and "whole-hearted," and the second reading fits the character. The Puritans revived the name, American pioneers kept it, and contemporary parents have brought it back in force; it now sits at rank 49. Two crisp syllables with a soft ending consonant. Biblical without heaviness, old-fashioned without being dusty.