Andre

From the Greek andreios — manly, brave — through the Latin Andreas, through the French saint who carried Christianity north to Scotland, and eventually into a name that has traveled every culture and continent while keeping its French form closest to the contemporary ear. Andre lands with quiet confidence: two syllables in American English, ahn-DRAY, with the stress riding the second beat, a name that sounds like it has somewhere to be and has already thought about how to get there.

Andre Agassi put the name on every tennis court in the 1990s — the bandanna, the baseline power, the late-career comeback narrative that became one of sport's great stories. Before him, Andre the Giant made it a name of mythic physical scale. The name has held steady across American generations without the wild swings of fashion, sitting now at rank 350, a position that reflects honest ongoing use rather than trend momentum. It has been equally at home in French households, African American families, and Portuguese-speaking communities.

Two syllables, clean and deliberate. Brothers named Bodie or Rhys would balance its European formality with something looser; a Kade or Wade beside it would make a household of short, strong names with different geographical souls. The boy this name tends to produce is the one who has a clear position on most things but only states it when asked, arrives five minutes early to everything, and somehow has friends distributed across every social circle without quite belonging to any single one of them.