Joyce

The name derives from the Old French Josse, tracing back to the medieval Breton masculine name Iodoc, meaning 'lord'. English usage eventually blurred the sound with joise, an Old French word for 'rejoicing'. American birth registries recorded it modestly in the late nineteenth century before it shifted almost entirely to girls during the nineteen-thirties and nineteen-forties.

The name reads as a woman who knows the exact square footage of her basement and keeps a labeled tin of spare buttons. With the average bearer now around seventy-two years old, the sound belongs firmly to rotary wall phones and station wagons. It suggests a household where butter is kept in a designated dish rather than its wrapper. Given that fewer than three hundred American infants received the name last year, anyone calling for Joyce at a playground is almost certainly addressing the grandmother.