Leo

Leo is the lion in the Latin, the constellation that rises in high summer (named for the Nemean lion that Heracles strangled in his first labor), and the name of thirteen popes who walked the marble halls of the Vatican — including Leo I (Saint Leo the Great, who turned Attila the Hun back from Rome in 452) and Leo XIII (the late-nineteenth-century pope who wrote the foundational social-Catholic encyclical Rerum novarum). It has also belonged to a Tolstoy (Leo, born Lev), a DiCaprio, a Messi (the Argentine soccer messiah, born Lionel but called Leo), and a surprisingly large number of very small children in Brooklyn coffee shops in the last decade.

The name's modern revival has been steep and structural: Leo entered the SSA top 100 in 2009, the top 50 in 2017, and the top 30 by 2023 — currently at number twenty-seven. The climb owes something to its compactness, something to its cosmic associations (Leo as zodiac sign, Leo as constellation), and something to a broader vintage-Edwardian revival that lifted other short, vowel-rich boys' names like Theo, Otto, and Eli.

Famous bearers include Leo Tolstoy (born Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy), Leo DiCaprio, Leo Messi, Pope Leo X (who excommunicated Luther), and Leo G. Carroll (the Hitchcock and U.N.C.L.E. character actor). Two letters of vowel doing all the work — LEE-oh — a name that opens wide on the long o, like a roar softened into a grin. Pairs beautifully with longer middle names (Leo Augustus, Leo Henry, Leo Wren, Leo James) and with siblings of any flavor. Strong, celestial, a little golden. Suits a child who will stand at the front of the group photo without being asked.