Romeo

It walks in with a balcony already overhead. Italian in origin, Romeo meant pilgrim to Rome — someone who had made the long southern journey to the holy city — but Shakespeare folded it into Verona in the 1590s and the name has carried a rose between its teeth ever since. The Montague boy who falls in love in Act One is arguably the most famous fictional bearer of any English-language name, a distinction that makes Romeo simultaneously romantic and slightly impossible to escape.

David and Victoria Beckham named their second son Romeo in 2002 and the American charts felt it within a few years — parents who had always loved the sound but feared the literary weight suddenly had a footballer's family as permission. The name now sits at rank 283, selected by parents who have made peace with the Shakespeare association or who consider it an asset rather than a burden.

Two syllables carry a lot of drama — RO-meo opens wide and lands on a long vowel, which gives it an operatic quality that shorter names cannot achieve. Siblings might be Kenneth, Tobias, or Holden — a shelf of names with literary or classical resonance. The boy who grows into Romeo tends to be demonstrative without self-consciousness, sends handwritten notes when a text would do, and arrives at things — friendships, commitments, enthusiasms — with a completeness that occasionally catches people off guard.