Dana

The name originated as a surname in Great Britain before crossing the Atlantic and establishing itself as a given name in the nineteenth century. American parents initially registered it for boys, helped along by the literary prominence of author Richard Henry Dana Jr. By the nineteen-fifties, its open final vowel prompted a steady migration toward girls, turning it into a fixture of late-twentieth-century birth rolls.

The name reads as a sensible nineteen-seventies creation that never caused a scene at roll call. With a peak in 1971 and an average bearer age of fifty-one, it firmly occupies the driver's seat of Generation X. About seventy-eight percent of recipients were girls, yet encountering a male Dana surprises nobody born before nineteen-eighty. The prevailing mental picture is an adult who owns a laminated road atlas and uses it without commentary.