Ezra

Ezra is the biblical scribe who led the exiles back to Jerusalem and rebuilt the Temple's library — a priest-editor, essentially, whose name means help in Hebrew. For most of the twentieth century the name belonged to poets and great-uncles: Ezra Pound, Ezra Jack Keats, the occasional rabbi. Then in the 2010s, against almost no one's expectations, it surged into the American top twenty. Two syllables with an unusual, whispery music — the z sitting where you don't expect it, the final a opening out. Vintage, literary, slightly bohemian. A name that suggests stacked books, strong coffee, and a boy who listens before he speaks.