Maverick

Samuel Maverick was a nineteenth-century Texas rancher who refused to brand his cattle, and his surname soon stood for any unbranded calf — and then, by extension, any human who wouldn't be marked. The 1986 film borrowed the word for a cocky Navy pilot, and decades later American parents began hearing it as a first name with ignition in it. Maverick now sits at rank 36 in the United States, a rapid climb from near-obscurity. Three syllables, a hard opening M, and a K that snaps the ending shut. The name announces itself — outdoorsy, a little swaggering, unmistakably American.