Celeste

From the Latin caelestis, meaning of the sky or heavenly, filtered into English usage through French. It has appeared steadily in American birth ledgers since the 1880s without ever suffering an undignified spike. The name took more than a century of quiet circulation before climbing toward the national top two hundred.

The name reads like a library card cataloged under art history. People tend to imagine someone who owns a fountain pen and knows the difference between velvet and velveteen. It carries an antique gloss without the heaviness of nineteenth-century parlor furniture. The current average age sits at thirty-five, though nearly half of all living bearers belong to Generation Z or younger.