Annie

Grace arrived in Hebrew as Hannah, became Anne when it crossed into Latin and then French, and then softened further into Annie — the sunlit diminutive that somehow carries more forward momentum than the original. It is a name that does not recede into the background. It announces itself, lightly but firmly, and stays in the room.

Annie Oakley shot cigarettes from her husband's lips in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show and became the template for a particular strain of American female competence. Annie Leibovitz built one of the defining visual archives of the twentieth century, one Rolling Stone cover at a time, across five decades. The red-haired orphan on Broadway has been belting about tomorrow since 1977 and shows no sign of stopping. Currently at rank 191 in the U.S., Annie has returned to favor as parents rediscover that the diminutive is the name — not a shortcut to something longer — and that short can mean more, not less.

Two syllables with a double consonant at the center giving it a touch more firmness than it first appears to have — AN-ee — bright and open at both ends. Alongside Daphne, Kylie, Phoebe, or Kaia it reads deliberate and warm without trying. The girl named Annie tends to introduce herself first, to remember where she put everything in a room she has visited once, to find the whole situation a little funny — and to usually be right about that.