Hope

Hope is one of the oldest virtue names in English, emerging among Puritan families in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries alongside Faith, Charity, and Prudence. Of the three theological virtues, hope is the one that looks forward, and the name keeps that posture, a lift rather than a promise. A single syllable, open-vowelled and quietly radiant, it carries none of the archness that some virtue names have accumulated. Steady in the American top 400 for decades, Hope still feels luminous rather than dated. A name that is both a wish and a stance, small and enduring.