Rome

All roads lead somewhere, and the one that leads to this name leads back to the Tiber and the seven hills and three thousand years of stone and argument. Rome as a given name is a very recent arrival on birth certificates, part of the place-name wave that has carried Memphis and Cairo and Paris onto playgrounds. The city is the etymological destination and the whole meaning: capital of an empire, root of a language family, shorthand for permanence.

Rome Wilson is the son of Boris Kodjoe and Nicole Ari Parker, which placed the name early in an entertainment context and gave it a degree of cultural visibility. At rank 453, it is climbing steadily, most often for boys but remaining quietly open in both directions, the kind of monosyllable that parks itself beside any surname and looks inevitable.

One syllable, the long O rolling through into a soft m — ROHM — like a word that hasn't finished yet when you stop saying it. It pairs with names from the same gravity range: Rome Bo, Rome Zayne, Rome Clark. The boy who gets this name has an unearned confidence that is somehow not annoying — the one who walks into a room he has never been in before and immediately seems to know where the door is.