Lucia

Lucia arrives with candles in her hair. The feminine form of the Latin Lucius, from lux, light, the name belongs to the third-century Sicilian martyr whose feast on December 13 is celebrated across Scandinavia with white robes, a crown of small flames, and saffron buns. It has been a staple of Italian, Spanish, and Scandinavian naming for well over a millennium and has risen sharply in the United States over the last decade to sit near the top 98. Pronounced Loo-CHEE-ah in Italian or Loo-SEE-ah in English, the name reads as luminous, continental, faintly operatic, the sound of a girl with a sketchbook.