Odin

He came down from the Norse rafters and landed in American nurseries. Odin is the Allfather, the one-eyed god of wisdom, poetry, war, and runes — the name drawn from Old Norse Odinn, likely meaning "fury" or "inspiration," two qualities that turn out to pair surprisingly well. The name was once so sacred in the Norse world that mortals rarely dared use it; now it appears on kindergarten name tags in Colorado and Oregon and Texas, which says something interesting about the distance between reverence and affection.

Marvel's Thor franchise introduced the character Odin — played with considerable gravitas — to audiences who had never thought about Norse mythology, and the broader cultural appetite for Viking history and mythology has done the rest. Currently at rank 479, Odin has moved firmly into the American mainstream while retaining the mythological weight that drew parents to it. It is one of the few genuinely ancient divine names that has made this crossing without feeling ironic.

Two syllables balance between the grand and the everyday — OH-din — the long opening vowel giving it room, the hard ending landing with finality. It pairs well alongside Kendrick or Brantley for siblings who share a taste for strength and resonance, or beside Erik for a family leaning fully into its Norse roots. The boy who grows into Odin tends to be the one who knows things he hasn't explained how he knows, who is patient in the way that people are patient when they understand more than they're saying, who takes the long view as if he came by it naturally.