Ripley

Ripley is an English place-name turned surname, from the Old English rippel and leah, strip of land and woodland clearing. For decades it belonged to the believe-it-or-not oddities museum and to Patricia Highsmith's suave sociopath Tom Ripley. Then Sigourney Weaver, as Ellen Ripley in Alien, gave it a new spine: flamethrower, jumpsuit, one of the great heroines in science fiction. At 1250 and unisex, it reads brave, a little sci-fi, a little literary, with two bright syllables and a long ee landing. Ripley is a name that belongs to people who read the room and reach for the wrench anyway.