Aria

From the Italian noun for air, tune, or melody, which entered English as a term for a solo operatic vocal piece. It shares phonetic roots with Persian and Hebrew names of separate derivation. For most of the twentieth century it sat near the bottom of American birth registers before rocketing upward in the early 2010s.

The name reads as decisively contemporary, belonging almost exclusively to school-age children and toddlers. It arrived on the national scene alongside high-definition television and tablet computers rather than vinyl records. The bearer is routinely assumed to own light-up sneakers and have an opinion on streaming playlists. It is a name that has rarely had to sit through a twentieth-century history lesson it lived through.