Joan

Joan is the medieval English form of Johanna — ultimately from the Hebrew Yochanan, God is gracious — and it was everywhere for most of the twentieth century before slipping quietly out of the top hundred, then the top two hundred, then further still. Now, at 1013, it's coming back, as names with that particular mid-century plainness tend to do once enough time has passed.

The associations are not modest: Joan of Arc on horseback in the Loire, Joan Didion at her typewriter in Sacramento and New York, Joan Baez at Newport with a guitar and a cause, Joan Holloway in a pencil skirt holding the whole office together. A single syllable with no ornament and no apology, Joan writes its own memo and doesn't wait for a reply. Increasingly unisex, it lands with particular force as a middle name, a clean strong beat after something softer.