Jeremy

Jeremy is the soft-edged English version of a hard prophetic name. From the Hebrew Yirmeyahu, "appointed by God" or "God will raise up," it belonged to the sixth-century BCE prophet whose book of sorrowful warnings gave English the word jeremiad. The medieval shift to Jeremy smoothed the edges and gave it to a thousand boys named in the wake of Jeremy Fisher, Jeremy Irons, and Pearl Jam's "Jeremy." The name peaked in the American top 20 in the 1970s and rests today at 266 — a Gen X favorite still finding takers. Three lilting syllables, gentle consonants. Bookish, approachable, quietly soulful.