Hudson

Henry Hudson sailed up the river that now bears his name in 1609, looking for a passage to Asia and finding, instead, the Palisades — and the name has carried that riverine, exploratory mood ever since. It began as an English surname, the son of Hudde (a medieval pet form of Hugh), and crossed into given-name territory in the twentieth century. Kate Hudson kept it in the cultural air; the river kept it in the geographic one. Hudson has climbed into the American top twenty-five over the last decade. Two crisp syllables with a soft d, a name that reads like a warehouse loft in Tribeca. Modern, outdoorsy, and lightly aspirational.