Tanner

Tanner began in the workshops of medieval England, an occupational surname for a man who softened hides with oak bark and salt. It smells, in its oldest form, of leather and woodsmoke, but on the modern playground it lands breezy and sunlit, all surfboards and Saturday mornings. The name climbed hard in the 1990s and has eased into rank 443, still solidly familiar but no longer everywhere. The sharp T, the doubled n, the crisp r, all of it snaps with energy. Tanner has that American ability to sound both old-country and thoroughly suburban at once, hardworking and handsome without announcing either.