Wayne

Derived from an English occupational surname for a wagon maker or driver, tracing back to the Old English wægn. American parents first adopted it in honor of Revolutionary War general Anthony Wayne, scattering the name across county seats and early frontier settlements. By the middle of the twentieth century, Hollywood Westerns turned a regional surname into a national fixture.

A Wayne reads as a man who knows the difference between various grades of motor oil without consulting a manual. The name sits squarely in wood-paneled dens and workshop pegboards, carried by an average bearer who is sixty-four years old. More than half of all living bearers belong to the Baby Boom generation, with another twenty-two percent arriving in Generation X. It sounds like someone who arrives fifteen minutes early to an appointment and waits in the truck with the radio off.