Silas

Silas sounds like a name whispered between trees. From the Greek and Latin roots meaning of the forest, it belonged first to the New Testament companion of Paul, and then for a long time to Quaker ledgers and George Eliot's linen-weaver in Silas Marner. The name slipped out of fashion for most of the twentieth century before returning with the cottagecore and biblical-boy waves of the 2010s; it now sits comfortably in the top 85. There is moss and bark in the sound of it, an older-brother steadiness. Silas reads as thoughtful and slightly solitary, the kind of boy who knows the names of birds.