London

London is a place-name given a first-name passport, the great English capital reimagined on a birth certificate. Its origins are Celtic and pre-Roman, debated among scholars, possibly rooted in a word meaning river too wide to ford. Two solid syllables, LUN-dun, grounded and contemporary. The name stepped onto American charts in the early 2000s, rising for girls first and then for boys, part of the same city-name wave that has lifted Paris, Brooklyn, and Kingston. It feels cosmopolitan, at home on passports and on playgrounds. London reads confident and urbane, a child with a sense of destination. It carries a hint of travel in its consonants.