Isaiah

The prophet whose voice thunders through Handel's Messiah every December, Isaiah saw swords beaten into plowshares and a child named Immanuel. The Hebrew Yeshayahu means the Lord saves, and the name's long arc runs from eighth-century-B.C. Jerusalem to colonial pulpits to contemporary nurseries. African American families carried it through generations when the name had fallen from white American use, and it surged broadly in the 1990s and 2000s on the strength of its gospel cadence. Ray Thomas's funky keys, Isaiah Washington's Grey's Anatomy run, Isaiah Thomas at the foul line. It currently ranks 56, given to about one in 327 boys.