Felicity

Felicity is happiness itself, lifted into a name. From the Latin felicitas, "good fortune" or "bliss," it was the name of an early Christian martyr and, later, of the spirited Keri Russell character whose late-nineties TV show carried the name into American nurseries. It has held a gentle, literary presence ever since, now at 486. Four syllables move with the buoyancy of their meaning, the stressed middle lending it skip. The name reads as cheerful without being frivolous, bookish without being stuffy. Nicknames Fee, Fliss, and Cee come easily. A small declaration of joy, elegantly phrased.