Owen

Picture a Welsh hillside at dawn, a young man with a bow slung across his back — that is the image carried inside Owen, a name built from the old Welsh for "young warrior." It has the sturdiness of a handshake and the softness of a vowel that opens, never shuts. Currently sitting at rank 26 in the United States, Owen occupies that rare middle country between folk tradition and modern preference: familiar enough to wear well, distinct enough to avoid the playground chorus. Two clean syllables, a worn leather jacket of a name, equally at ease on a toddler or a professor.