Tate

Tate is a single clean syllable, the kind of name a father might call across a pasture. From the Old English tāt, meaning "cheerful," it began life as an English surname before crossing over to first-name use in late twentieth-century America. It entered the top 300 in the 1990s and has held a steady middle perch ever since, riding the broader taste for short, surname-style boys' names. There's no flourish in Tate, no hidden syllable waiting to emerge. It says what it means and leaves, which is part of its considerable, understated charm.