Everett

Everett is an English surname made good, rooted in the Old English Eoforheard, brave as a wild boar, which is more charming on a playground than its etymology suggests. It drifted into American first-name use in the nineteenth century and was long attached to the senator Everett Dirksen and the Coen brothers' Ulysses Everett McGill in O Brother, Where Art Thou. After decades of near-dormancy, the name has surged into the top 85 since the 2010s, riding the broader preppy-prep-school wave. It carries wire-rimmed seriousness without feeling stiff, the sound of a child who asks follow-up questions and remembers what you told him.