Samantha

Samantha carries a porch-swing warmth, the sound of a screen door and a summer evening. Likely a feminine elaboration of Samuel, rooted in the Hebrew meaning heard by God, it first surfaced in the American South in the eighteenth century before Bewitched sent it soaring in the 1960s and Sex and the City gave it a cosmopolitan edge decades later. Three easy syllables, a soft S opening and a gentle landing, equally at home in a law office or a lullaby. It held a spot in the American top ten for nearly twenty years. Friendly, grown-up, quietly glamorous.