Nico

Nico is a small name with long passports. Short for Nicholas, from the Greek nikolaos, "victory of the people," it circulates through Italian, Spanish, Greek, and German homes with the same easy two syllables. The singer Nico of the Velvet Underground lent it cool in the 1960s; a long bench of European footballers has kept it current. In American charts Nico has been climbing steadily since the 2000s, now comfortably in the top 250. It's boyish, cosmopolitan, and a little unhurried, the kind of name you might hear called from a trattoria kitchen or a soccer sideline.