Maisie

She arrives like a back door swinging open on a warm afternoon. A Scottish diminutive of Margaret — itself from the Greek margarites, pearl — Maisie flourished in nineteenth-century Scotland before Henry James chose it for the small, watchful heroine of What Maisie Knew in 1897, a child who sees everything the adults around her are carefully trying to conceal. The name sat mostly dormant through the mid-twentieth century, then climbed sharply when actress Maisie Williams of Game of Thrones gave it a new generation of global visibility and a certain fierce competence.

In America it now sits at rank 255, part of the vintage-revival wave that brought back Hazel, Maeve, and Clementine. The pearl meaning gives it a quiet elegance that the breezy spelling works to counterbalance — formal roots, cottagecore surface, the combination that seems to be exactly what contemporary parents are after.

The name moves as two light beats — MAY-zee — rolling and bright, impossible to make sound stern even when you are trying. It pairs naturally with Jane or Faith in a sibling set, or beside Gracie for a pair of old-fashioned nicknames that never tip into precious. The girl named Maisie has a memory for detail that routinely surprises people who underestimated her, a tendency to collect small beautiful things, and a firm opinion about every book she has ever read. She is not easily flustered. She was not easily flustered at seven either. Henry James would have recognized her immediately and given her a great deal more credit than her parents did.