Harold

The name derives from the Old English Hereweald, joining Germanic elements that signify an army and a ruler. King Harold II held the English throne briefly until the Norman Conquest at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, after which the name largely vanished from royal rolls. Victorian antiquarians revived it in the nineteenth century, and American registrars were cataloging thousands of newborn boys with the moniker before 1900.

The name reads today as someone who keeps a wooden folding ruler behind the basement workbench. With an estimated average bearer age of 66, it predominantly summons the generation whose fathers came of age during the Coolidge administration. A Harold tends to be pictured inspecting furnace pilot lights, holding a carbon-copy paper receipt, or declining to discard an electric drill that only requires fresh brushes. It rarely suggests an enthusiast of touchscreens.