Emerson

Emerson carries the quiet authority of a New England lecture hall, forever tied to the essayist Ralph Waldo, whose transcendentalist sermons turned a surname into a thinking person's talisman. Rooted in the Old English Emery, "brave and powerful," it literally means "son of Emery," though modern parents have loosened that lineage entirely. Once strictly given to boys, Emerson crossed into girls' territory in the 2000s and now sits comfortably in the unisex zone, hovering around the 150s on the U.S. charts. Three measured syllables, a crisp er, a softly lingering son. Cerebral, American, a little literary.