Sylvia

Rhea Silvia, the Vestal mother of Romulus and Remus, gave her woodland name to a long line of queens, saints, and poets, Sylvia Plath chief among them. The Latin silva means forest, and the name has always carried the hush of moss and old light. It peaked in American usage in the 1930s, receded for decades, and is now quietly returning as parents reach past their grandmothers' generation for something lovelier than fashionable. Two soft syllables, the Y giving it an old-world tilt. Sylvia reads serious without being somber, literary without trying, luminous in a shaded way.