Alicia

The name arrives on three liquid syllables, each one opening into the next — ah-LEE-sha or ah-LEE-see-ah depending on which side of the Atlantic you're standing on. Alicia is the Latinized form of Alice, which traces through Old French Adelais back to the Germanic Adalheidis, meaning noble kind. The Latin treatment gave the name the warmer, more Mediterranean line, the extra vowel movement, something that looks at home carved in stone above a doorway in Barcelona as easily as printed on a playbill in London.

It had its American heyday in the 1980s and drifted through the charts in the decades since, settling now at rank 436 — present but unhurried, below the noise of the top hundred without being anywhere near obscure. Alicia Keys made the name synonymous with a particular kind of genius: classical training applied to something urgent and contemporary, which is not a bad set of associations for a name to carry.

Three syllables give a girl room to play: Alicia can introduce herself formally in a job interview and answer to Ali or Leesh with equal ease. It pairs gracefully with shorter surnames and with middles like Alicia Rose, Alicia Jane, Alicia Wren. Across the fence you'll find Madeleine and Dorothy and Elisa — names that share Alicia's quality of sounding cultured without sounding precious. The girl who wears this name grows into it, which is the best thing a name can do.