Madison

A medieval English surname meaning son of Maud — Maud itself being a shortening of the Germanic Mathilda, meaning mighty in battle, the name of an eleventh-century Holy Roman Empress and several medieval queens — Madison spent most of its life attached to a founding father (James Madison, the fourth U.S. president and primary architect of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights) and to a New York City avenue. Then in 1984, in the romantic comedy Splash, a mermaid played by Daryl Hannah, asked her name by Tom Hanks, looked up at a Madison Avenue street sign and adopted it as a joke.

The screenwriters were poking fun at the absurdity of using a place name as a girl's name. American parents took the joke seriously. Within a decade, Madison had become one of the top ten girls' names in the country, where it remained for over fifteen years; it currently sits at rank forty-six. The name is now used overwhelmingly for girls — one of the most thorough first-name-on-a-girl gender flips in modern American naming history, alongside Ashley and Lindsay.

Famous Madisons include Madison Beer (the singer), Madison De La Garza (the Desperate Housewives actress), and the wave of millennial Madisons born in the 1990s and 2000s who are now entering adulthood. Three syllables, brisk and confident — MAD-i-son — with a soft middle d. Nicknames span Maddie for the affectionate, Maddy, Mads. Pairs cleanly with most middles (Madison Rose, Madison Mae, Madison Grace). The rare name whose first-name-on-a-girl popularity is so thorough that its origin story (a presidential surname, a mermaid joke) has been completely rewritten.