Caleb

One of the two Israelite scouts who came back from a forty-day reconnaissance of Canaan with a good report instead of a panicked one — when the other ten spies told Moses the land was full of giants and impossible to conquer, Caleb and Joshua argued the opposite. As a result, of all the adults who left Egypt with Moses, only Caleb and Joshua were permitted by God to enter the Promised Land forty years later. Caleb in the Hebrew Bible is the man who keeps his nerve when the rest of the camp is panicking, and the name has carried that quality ever since.

The Hebrew Kalev has been glossed variously as dog (in the ancient Near Eastern sense of faithful companion) and whole-hearted (from the root klv, meaning all of the heart), and the second reading fits the biblical character. The Puritans revived the name in seventeenth-century England (along with Joshua, Ezra, and Nathan); American pioneers carried it across the Appalachians and onto the prairie; it lay quiet through most of the twentieth century and then came back hard in the 1990s, riding the same vintage-Hebrew wave that lifted Asher, Levi, Ezra, and Isaac.

Caleb entered the SSA top 100 in 1991, the top 50 by 1998, and the top 30 by 2018, currently at rank forty-nine. Famous Calebs include Caleb Followill (Kings of Leon), Caleb McLaughlin (Stranger Things), Caleb Landry Jones (the actor), and Caleb Plant (the boxer). Two crisp syllables — KAY-leb — with a soft ending consonant. Pairs beautifully with biblical and modern siblings (Caleb and Asher, Caleb and Mae, Caleb and Wren). Nicknames are scarce: Cal for the most common, Cay for the affectionate. Biblical without heaviness, old-fashioned without being dusty.