Oliver

The name entered English from the Old French Olivier, linked to the Latin word for the olive tree. Medieval popularity grew through the eleventh-century epic The Song of Roland. English colonists carried it to New England during the seventeenth century. It remained a quiet regional fixture until nineteenth-century writers widened its circulation.

The name no longer suggests a nineteenth-century portrait subject. Today it reads as a boy born well into the twenty-first century. Seventy-four percent of living bearers belong to Generation Alpha. The historical parlor dust has cleared, leaving an average bearer age of thirteen. Calling the name down a middle school hallway functions as a roll call for seventh grade.