Arden

In As You Like It, Arden is the forest Rosalind escapes to — a place Shakespeare drew from a real woodland in Warwickshire, the Forest of Arden, and possibly from his mother's family name. The Old English root describes a valley of eagles, which gives the name a topographical gravity that the Shakespearean association only deepens. Wherever Arden appears, it carries that quality of a place slightly removed from the ordinary, where the rules are looser and the light is different.

At 943 and unisex, Arden has the feel of a name found on an old map — familiar in sound, specific in resonance. Two syllables ending on a soft n, it reads literary and outdoorsy in the same breath, like finding a dog-eared paperback in a hiking pack. It pairs cleanly with surnames that are short or sharp: Arden Cole, Arden Blake.