Maisie

Maisie is a cottage door left open in summer. A Scottish diminutive of Margaret — itself from the Greek margarites, "pearl" — it flourished in nineteenth-century Scotland, was chosen by Henry James for the small heroine of What Maisie Knew in 1897, and later attached itself to actress Maisie Williams of Game of Thrones, which sent the name climbing across the English-speaking world. In America it sits around 255, still feeling discovered rather than overused. The spelling tilts British and literary; the sound is all pigtails and warm bread. Cheerful, one-syllable in the mouth but two on the page, and impossible to say gloomily.