Aimee

From the French past participle aimée, meaning loved, which traces back to the Latin amatus. The spelling spent decades as a minor presence in American registries before hitching a ride on the meteoric rise of the streamlined Amy in the nineteen-seventies. It offered parents a way to choose a chart-topping sound while keeping one foot in French orthography.

The name usually belongs to someone who spent grade school clarifying that there is double-e at the end and an i in the middle. It reads unmistakably as mid-to-late Generation X, with a healthy secondary wave among early Millennials. Bearers are widely assumed to have had a favorite radio cassette tape in nineteen-eighty-nine. Most people who meet an Aimee today assume she knows how to parallel park on the first attempt.