Geneva

Derived from the Swiss city name, ultimately of Celtic origin meaning river mouth. American parents adopted it steadily in the late nineteenth century alongside a general taste for continental place names and soundalikes for Genevieve.

The name reads as upright, tidy, and firmly rooted in early twentieth-century civic life. It suggests hard candies kept in cut glass, monogrammed stationary, and a voter registration card that has never lapsed. Today, it belongs almost exclusively to women old enough to remember rotary telephones.