Camille

Camille comes from the Roman Camillus, a title given to young attendants who served at religious ceremonies — noble children, ritual-ready. The French softened it into two syllables of quiet glamour: ka-MEEL. Alexandre Dumas fils wrote La Dame aux camélias in 1848; Verdi turned it into La Traviata; Greta Garbo played the consumptive heroine on screen. The sculptor Camille Claudel gave the name its artistic gravity. In the U.S., Camille has hovered inside the top 500 for most of the past century and has recently climbed into the top 250. Elegant without effort, French without fuss, a whisper of magnolia.