Dawn

Derived from the Old English dagung, the word marked the first light of morning centuries before anyone thought to put it on a birth certificate. It entered American use in the late nineteenth century, first appearing in federal records in 1888. Parents took to it in earnest after the Second World War, exchanging longer Victorian choices for a single, unadorned syllable that peaked in 1970.

The name reads as a snapshot of 1970, the year sixteen thousand American girls received it. It suggests someone who reached adulthood alongside cassette tapes and knows how to back a station wagon down a long driveway. Sixty percent of living bearers belong to Generation X, with the average age resting at fifty-seven. The name does not linger or negotiate; it delivers one syllable and moves on.