Lorelei

Lorelei comes from a rock on the Rhine, a steep slate bluff where the river narrows and the current runs fast. German legend populated it with a golden-haired siren whose song lured boatmen to wreck. Heinrich Heine's 1824 poem fixed the story in literary memory, and the name, meaning roughly murmuring rock, slipped free of its cliff to become a given name. Gilmore Girls introduced a generation of Americans to it, and at rank 456 it has stayed gently above the radar. Three singing syllables, mostly vowels. Lorelei is river-mist and folk ballad, both cautionary tale and lullaby, unmistakable and slightly enchanted.