Carter

A cart wheel creaking down a rutted English lane, a man hauling grain to market — Carter began as a medieval occupational surname for someone who drove a cart, and for seven hundred years that was all it was. A Georgia peanut farmer became the thirty-ninth president and nudged the name toward the first-name column; American parents finished the job in the 1990s. It now sits at rank 45 in the United States. Two squared-off syllables with a bright opening and a firm R at the heart. Preppy in reputation, working-class in origin, and unisex in current use — a name that has done honest work.