Banks

A single syllable with a riverine hush behind it, Banks comes from the Old Norse bakki, meaning the slope of a hill or the edge of a waterway, and long served as a surname for those who lived along such rises. Hollywood familiarized it through Mary Poppins and, more recently, through Elizabeth Banks, but its rise as a first name is a quiet one, joining the U.S. top 500 only in the last few years. One crisp syllable, that final consonant cluster landing like a stamp. Banks reads modern, moneyed without ostentation, a name that travels light and closes every deal.