Joey

Joey is a name that runs in, untied shoelaces and all. A diminutive of Joseph, from the Hebrew Yosef meaning he will add, it shrugs off the patriarch's weight for something kid-brother bright. The long ee at the end is pure American affection, the sound of porch steps and sitcom laugh tracks, of Friends and Dawson's Creek, of baby kangaroos in picture books. At 889 and thoroughly unisex, Joey reads sunny without being soft, a name with a catcher's mitt in one hand. It doesn't outgrow itself so much as refuse to.