Thiago

A Portuguese midfielder threads a ball through a seam no one else saw, and the commentator says the name like a song: tchee-AH-go. Thiago is the Portuguese and Spanish form of James, itself a descendant of the Hebrew Jacob, by way of Santiago, the pilgrim saint whose bones draw walkers across Galicia every summer. In the U.S. the name climbed with Brazilian and Latin American migration and the global reach of fútbol. It now ranks 55, given to about one in 324 boys. All motion, no stiffness, with a fluid middle syllable that keeps English speakers on their toes.