Francis

The name began as a joke. Giovanni di Bernardone's merchant father, who traded fabric across the Alps into France, started calling his son Francesco — little Frenchman — as an affectionate nickname, and that nickname became the name of Assisi's great saint, the man who preached to birds and stripped off his fine clothes in the town square and rebuilt churches stone by stone. From the Latin Franciscus, meaning Frenchman, it spread across Christendom with the speed that only a saint's name achieves.

Pope Francis chose it in 2013, reviving its papal register. Before that, Francis Bacon and Francis Scott Fitzgerald had given it a literary and philosophical weight. It currently sits at rank 450 in the U.S., holding its ground with a quiet authority, neither climbing the chart aggressively nor retreating — a name comfortable at mid-table, confident it will still be there in fifty years.

Two syllables, the first soft and slightly French-kissed, the second landing flat and firm — FRAN-sis — the kind of sound that fits equally on a seminary door and a novelist's book jacket. It pairs well with the names nearby: Francis Damon, Francis Tanner, Francis Raiden. The boy who carries it tends toward the measured gesture, the one who picks up the litter other people walk past, who earns people's trust before they quite notice they've given it.