Violet

Violet is the color of bruised dusk, the flower Napoleon sent Josephine when he was exiled to Elba, and the shade Victorians wore in the second year of mourning — a name with more hidden melancholy than its soft sound suggests. It comes straight from the Latin viola, the flower itself, by way of Old French violete, and it was first used as a girls' name in late medieval England, becoming popular in the Victorian language-of-flowers era when each blossom carried encoded meaning (violets meant modesty and faithfulness).

The name peaked in the early 1900s, dropped almost out of use by the mid-century, and lay dormant until the 2000s. Roald Dahl gave us a gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Lemony Snicket gave us a brilliant inventor in A Series of Unfortunate Events; Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck gave their daughter the name in 2005, kicking off a full-scale floral revival. Violet entered the SSA top 100 in 2009 and has climbed steadily into the top 20, currently at number fifteen.

Famous bearers include the silent-film actress Violet Hunt, Violet Crawley (the Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey, possibly the single most influential fictional driver of the name's revival), and Violet Affleck. Two syllables — VI-o-let, or VI-let in the rushed two-syllable American — the v a small flutter, the final t clipped like a stem. Nicknames include Vi, Vee, Lettie, and Letty. Pairs naturally with other floral or Edwardian names (Violet Rose, Violet Mae, Violet Wren). Cottagey, literary, and just a touch moody. Pretty without being sweet.