Genesis

The first word of the Greek Septuagint, genesis, meaning origin or beginning, the opening chord of the whole Western library. As a given name it is a twentieth-century American invention, lifted from scripture into the birth announcements of the 1990s and popularized by Latinx families who heard its rhythm and weight. Peter Gabriel's band, Sega's console, a thousand church bulletins. It now ranks 55 and is given to about one in 421 American babies. Three syllables that sound like a door opening; a word that means the first morning, pinned to a small person who is, for the family that named her, exactly that.