Santana

The name arrives in three syllables that already have rhythm — San-ta-na, the syllables spaced like a guitar riff resolving. Its origins are Spanish and Portuguese: a contraction of Santa Ana, the mother of the Virgin in Catholic tradition, carried as a surname across Latin America and the American Southwest before crossing into given-name use. What Carlos Santana did in 1969, playing Woodstock with a band named after himself, was seal something that the name had always half-suggested: that there is music in the syllables themselves.

Ranked 811 and comfortably unisex, Santana reads bohemian and sun-warm, with enough formality at its edges to hold. It pairs well with a plain surname — Santana Walsh, Santana Reid — letting the three syllables do all the talking. The percussion is in the middle; the hush is at the edges. It's a name that carries its own weather.