Lyra

Lyra takes its name from the small, luminous northern constellation, home to the bright star Vega. The word is Latin for "lyre," the instrument of Orpheus, whose harp was set among the stars after his death. The name gained modern literary life through Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, whose heroine Lyra Belacqua has steered it onto American birth certificates in rising numbers; it now sits at 482. Two syllables, open and musical, with a soft rolled R at the center. Lyra reads as celestial and bookish at once, a name suited to stargazers and readers, carrying a faint chord of distant music.