Aubrey

The name descends from the Norman French rendering of the Germanic Alberic, a compound translating roughly to elf ruler. It crossed the English Channel with the Normans in 1066 and remained an occasional masculine name and surname for centuries. In America, it sat quietly in the birth register as a boy's name before shifting toward girls in the nineteen-seventies and climbing sharply.

A hearing of the name today brings to mind someone born around the arrival of the second-generation iPad. The average Aubrey is twenty, holds a driver's license with minimal wear, and likely shared a middle school homeroom with two others who spelled it differently. The name reads as modern, soft-spoken, and completely disconnected from its medieval roots. Most bearers have never heard the nineteen-seventies soft-rock ballad that first nudged it onto the charts.