Ronin

Ronin arrives with a slight bow and a steady gaze. In Japanese, a ronin was a masterless samurai, free to wander, bound by no lord, and the word itself literally translates as "wave man," drifting like the tide. The name's Western popularity owes a debt to the 1998 John Frankenheimer film and, more recently, to parents drawn to its spare, cinematic sound. There's also an unrelated Irish variant, Ronan, which may have nudged its appeal among anglophone families. Ranked 493 and rising, Ronin manages to feel both ancient and cleanly contemporary, a name with a katana and a passport.