Sydney

Sydney began as a medieval English surname, a contraction of "Saint Denis" carried by a courtly family that included the Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney. It traveled to the southern hemisphere with the founding of an Australian harbor city, and from there into American nurseries, peaking spectacularly in 1999 at number 23. The name has since eased down to a much more selective 288, which suits it. Two clean syllables, an airy finish, a hint of harbor light and cricket pitches. Smart, breezy, a little cosmopolitan, Sydney has outgrown the trend and settled into its own elegant adulthood.