Juniper

Juniper smells like gin and high-country weather, an evergreen shrub whose blue-black berries the Romans called iuniperus. As a name, it barely existed in America until the 2010s, when cottagecore sensibilities and a broader botanical revival carried it into the U.S. top 200 by 2020. June sits inside it like a pocket nickname, and the full three syllables have the bright snap of fresh-cut herb. Juniper Serra, the eighteenth-century Franciscan missionary, lent it an older Catholic footing, but most contemporary parents come for the pine-needle freshness. It feels literary, slightly witchy, and pleasantly unbothered by convention.