Amy

It sounds like a small admission. Amy comes from the Old French Amée, itself from the Latin amata — beloved, loved one — and the name has carried that meaning lightly, never making a fuss about it. Two syllables in the dictionary, two syllables in the room, the kind of name that fits without adjustment and never needs to be spelled out for a stranger.

Louisa May Alcott gave it literary standing in Little Women, Amy March being the youngest sister, vain and artistic and more complicated than she looks. Amy Winehouse gave it smoke and gravel. Amy Poehler gave it comic intelligence. The name had its biggest American decades in the 1970s and 80s, sitting in the top three for stretches, and it now rests at rank 228 — vintage without being antique, present without being ubiquitous.

The two syllables land on an open vowel and close on it too, a name that feels complete the moment it leaves your mouth. It pairs naturally with the similarly warm middles in its orbit — Amy Celine, Amy Vera — and it takes no nickname, needing none. The girl named Amy tends to be funnier than you expected, more certain of her opinions than her soft opening suggests, and entirely unbothered by the fact that she doesn't sound like she's trying.