Esme

Esme has the quiet glamour of a name left in a Paris cafe. It comes from the Old French esmer, meaning to esteem or to love, and was used in Scotland from the sixteenth century before fading into rare-book territory. J.D. Salinger resurrected it in his story For Esme, with Love and Squalor, and the Twilight series and period dramas have given it a fresh lift. Two syllables pronounced EZ-may, short, elegant, and a little old-soul. It has climbed sharply on American charts in the 2020s. The name feels like a secret kept well, a girl with fountain-pen handwriting and opinions on poetry.