Guy

Derived from the French rendering of the Germanic name Wido, likely related to the root for wood or wide. It arrived in England with the Normans and became notorious via Guy Fawkes, whose failed 1605 gunpowder plot eventually turned the name into an English common noun. In the United States, it functioned as an ordinary given name throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Hearing the name today suggests a man born during the Eisenhower administration who knows how to operate an acetylene torch. It occupies an awkward space in modern English, where the name and the generic noun for any adult male collide in casual conversation. Half of all living Americans with the name belong to the Baby Boomer generation. It reads as someone who does not bother introducing himself twice.