Sienna

Hold a piece of raw sienna pigment up to the light and you'll see the color before you name it — that warm red-brown that Tuscan painters ground from the earth outside the city of Siena for centuries, the color of rooftops at six in the evening. The name lifts directly from that Italian city, which in turn pressed its soil into the palette of half the Renaissance. It arrived on the American charts in the early 2000s trailing Mediterranean warmth and a faint smell of linseed oil.

Sienna Miller gave the name a jet-set shimmer in the mid-aughts, modeling it across tabloid covers and red carpets with the ease of someone who never had to try too hard. American parents were already circling it for its sound; she confirmed it had the right bones. It has climbed confidently to rank 139 on the girls chart, settling in among the color and season names that have dominated the modern era without any of their ephemerality.

Three syllables, see-EN-ah, with the stress falling on the bright middle vowel and the double N slowing just enough for the final open sound to land. It sits companionably next to Ember or Summer in a sibling set, names that share its elemental, chromatic warmth. The girl who carries Sienna tends to move through a room like she already knows where the good light is.