Megan

Megan started life in the Welsh hills as a pet form of Margaret, the pearl, and stayed close to chapel walls and river valleys until somewhere in the 1970s when it crossed into the wider English-speaking world and became, almost overnight, everyone's. In the United States it was a top-twenty name through much of the 1990s, the kind of name every school corridor knows by heart — cheerful, dependable, the name of best friends and babysitters and the girl who always remembered your birthday.

Now cooling from that peak, Megan occupies interesting territory in 2026. It's not quite vintage — the people who bore it most densely are in their thirties, still very much present — but it's no longer ubiquitous either, which means a child named Megan today gets the warmth of familiarity without the saturation. The two syllables move easily, MEG-an, like a name that has always known how to introduce itself. The Welsh connection gives it more depth than its pop-cultural moment might suggest; pair it with Elin or Mari for siblings and the Celtic thread becomes clear. Megan is approachable in the best sense — not a name trying to impress, a name trying to be genuinely useful.