Arden

Arden is the forest Rosalind flees to in As You Like It, a real woodland in Warwickshire that Shakespeare borrowed for his green world. The name descends from an Old English root meaning valley of the eagle, and carries that mossy, half-enchanted quality wherever it goes. It doubles as a surname, a cosmetics house, a Delaware town. At 943 and unisex, it sounds both literary and unfussy, two syllables that end on a soft n. Arden reads like a pathway into somewhere older and a little wilder, a name with ivy on its walls and good light through the trees.