Greg

Shortened from the Greek Gregorios, meaning watchful or alert, which passed into Latin as Gregorius. English speakers trimmed it down to a single syllable by the middle of the twentieth century. In the United States, parents began filing it as an independent legal name on birth certificates rather than a household nickname.

The name reads as a man who owns an assortment of ratcheting tie-down straps and knows how to use them. It belongs squarely to the era of station wagons with faux-wood siding. More than half of living holders belong to the Baby Boom generation, with an average age sitting right at sixty. Hearing it on a toddler today feels slightly disorienting, like finding a rotary telephone plugged into an optical fiber jack.