Augustus

Augustus wears a laurel wreath with modern irony. From the Latin augustus, meaning venerable or majestic, it was the honorific title taken by Octavian in 27 BCE when he became Rome's first emperor, and later by a long line of European monarchs. John Green's Augustus Waters in The Fault in Our Stars softened the name for a new generation, giving it bookish teenage gravitas. Ranked 408 in the U.S., it nicknames cleanly to Gus, which does a lot of charming. Three long syllables, the central st crisp as a coin on marble. Imperial, literary, somehow both formal and a little funny.