Odessa

Named after the Black Sea port city founded by Catherine the Great, which borrowed its moniker from the ancient Greek settlement of Odessos. American parents began writing it onto birth certificates in the late nineteenth century during a minor craze for distant geography.

The name reads like a faded map found inside an antique travel trunk. It carries a heavy dose of rural railway history alongside a recent revival in urban nurseries. People expect either a great-grandmother who made preserves from scratch or a toddler playing with wooden blocks.