Levi

Levi Strauss was a Bavarian immigrant selling dry goods in Gold Rush San Francisco when he and a Reno tailor named Jacob Davis patented a pair of riveted canvas pants in 1873 — and somehow the name has carried that workwear warmth ever since, even though the man himself was just one bearer of an ancient name. Its roots run much deeper. In Genesis, Levi is Jacob's third son, born to Leah, and the Hebrew verb lavah means joined or attached — a name given by a mother hoping her husband would now draw close.

The Levites became the priestly tribe of ancient Israel, and the name carried sacred weight through centuries of Jewish life before American parents picked it up as a name that sounded simultaneously old-soul and contemporary. Levi has climbed from near-total obscurity in 1980 (where it sat outside the top 600) into the American top fifteen in the last two decades, one of the steepest sustained rises of any boys' name on record — boosted partly by Matthew McConaughey naming his son Levi in 2008, partly by the broader Western/cowboy aesthetic of the 2010s, partly by the simple physical fact that the jeans label has made the name visible on millions of back pockets.

Famous bearers include Levi Strauss himself, Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops, Levi Eshkol the Israeli prime minister, and Levi from the manga Attack on Titan. Two syllables, both long vowels, the v holding the middle like a seam. Pairs with everything from Western brothers (Levi Cash, Levi Wolf) to vintage classics (Levi James, Levi Henry). Rugged, biblical, faintly indigo, and strangely tender.