Anthony

The name traces to the Latin family name Antonius, whose earlier linguistic origins remain obscure. An unpronounced h attached itself to English spellings during the Renaissance through an incorrect association with the Greek word for flower. In the United States, it has appeared on birth records every single year since 1880 without taking a decade off.

An Anthony reads as someone who reached adulthood alongside the optical mouse and the compact disc. The average bearer is now forty years old, positioned evenly between the cassette tape and the smartphone. The name tends to summon the image of someone carrying a gym bag with a broken zipper and owning a cordless drill that has never returned to its original plastic case. It arrived in bulk during 1990 and was common enough that it rarely required spelling aloud. Today, it is quietly losing ground among the cribs.