Finn

Fionn mac Cumhaill built the Giant's Causeway with his own hands in one legend, ate the salmon of wisdom from a cooking fire in another, and led the warrior band called the Fianna across the Irish hills in a dozen more. His name meant fair or white — the pale hair, the bright reputation — and when it compressed to Finn it kept the full weight of that mythological inheritance in a single syllable, which is an impressive amount of cargo for four letters to carry.

Mark Twain sent Huck Finn drifting down the Mississippi away from civilization in 1884, and that fictional Finn became American literature's great restless boy, the one who can't be settled or tamed or made to sit still at a supper table. Star Wars gave a stormtrooper-turned-hero the name in 2015 and introduced it to a new generation with a different kind of story. Currently at rank 198 in the U.S., Finn carries its brevity like a credential.

One syllable, front vowel, nasal close — FINN — a name that is complete the moment it ends, that doesn't linger. Alongside Jesse, Knox, Tate, or Joel it reads literary and brisk in a sibling row of short names with long histories. The boy named Finn tends to be the one who disappears into a book and surfaces with strong opinions about it, who knows the river better than any map does, who is always slightly further along the path than you assumed.