Artemis

Artemis was the goddess of the hunt and the moon in Greek religion, twin to Apollo, patron of wild animals and women in labor — a figure who preferred her own company and kept her bow. The name's origin is probably pre-Greek, its meaning absorbed by the myth it produced, and that depth without clarity only sharpens the name's atmosphere. There is something in Artemis that resists full explanation.

The name resurfaced in two directions almost simultaneously: the Artemis Fowl series gave it to a young antihero, and NASA gave it to its return-to-the-moon program. At 1022 and fully unisex, the three syllables release like arrows in sequence — crisp, aimed, gone. Mythic without being costumed, Artemis reads cool and slightly silvered, the kind of name that belongs equally to a scientist and to a person who takes long walks alone at night.