Robert

Robert is a bedrock name, Old Germanic hrod-beraht, bright fame, carried into English by the Normans and never really displaced. It spent most of the twentieth century parked in or near the American top ten and has now settled around the top 90, which, for a name this storied, amounts to a dignified retreat rather than a fall. Frost, De Niro, Redford, the Bard's Bobby Burns: the name covers poetry, film, and folk music without breaking a sweat. Robert offers three nicknames in one, Rob, Bob, and Bert, each with its own century. The name reads as grounded, reliable, shoulders squared without display.