Marcel

Marcel is the French diminutive of the Latin Marcus, itself derived from Mars, the Roman god of war, which gives the name a distant martial ancestry beneath all its civilized polish. It flourished in French-speaking and Arabic-speaking Mediterranean contexts where French was long a second language, from Beirut to Algiers. Marcel Proust spun time itself out of the name; Marcel Duchamp rewrote what art could be. Two syllables with the stress on the second, the soft French final L, it has the elegance of a linen suit. Literary, continental, quietly assured, Marcel is the name of long cafe afternoons.