Joey

Joey runs in with its shoelaces untied and does not apologize. A diminutive of Joseph, from the Hebrew Yosef meaning he will add, it shrugs off the patriarch's gravitas entirely and opts for something that sounds like a nickname yelled across a parking lot after a baseball game. The long ee ending is pure American affection — the same sound that made Bobby and Tommy and Tommy feel like people you'd actually want around.

Friends made it iconic for a decade; baby kangaroos have held it in picture-book territory for longer. At 889 and thoroughly unisex, Joey reads sunny without being saccharine, the kind of name that belongs to a catcher's mitt and an easy laugh. It doesn't outgrow itself so much as refuse to consider the question. Pair it with a longer, cooler surname and the contrast does all the work: Joey Ashford, Joey Crane.