Anthony

Here's a name that has spent centuries being quietly excellent and never once needed a rebrand. Anthony. Say it out loud and it sounds like someone who owns a good coat.

The roots are Etruscan, which is a rather glamorous thing to be able to say at a dinner party. The meaning is the real selling point though: priceless one, or highly praiseworthy. That is a lot of expectation to hang on a newborn, admittedly, but it is also exactly the sort of thing you will be muttering at three in the morning while pacing the landing. Priceless. Highly praiseworthy. Please go to sleep.

Tony, Ant, or the whole thing?

Part of the appeal is the built-in flexibility. Anthony in full is stately, the sort of name that looks right on a certificate or a brass plaque. Tony is warm and matey and will buy the first round. Ant is short, sharp and slightly cheeky, and will almost certainly be what his mates call him whether you like it or not. Three names for the price of one, which given the meaning feels appropriate.

It travels remarkably well, too. Anthony sits at number 33 in Brazil and number 41 in the United States, with Canada not far behind at 89. It's a comfortable 216 in England & Wales, and it pops up in the charts in Argentina, Mexico City, Catalonia and New Zealand as well. Not the flashy top-ten sort of popular, then, but the kind of steady, well-liked presence that never goes out of fashion because it was never really in fashion to begin with. It just is.

Good company

The namesakes are a distinguished bunch. There's Anthony Hopkins, the Welsh-American actor and director, and Anthony Eden, the British soldier, diplomat and politician. And for anyone who likes their names with a bit of appetite, Anthony Bourdain, the American chef and television personality, proved the name can be as at home in a kitchen as on a stage. Actor, statesman, chef: it's a name that seems to suit ambition of any flavour.

Sibling-wise, Anthony has a strong sense of family. It sits very happily next to Dominic, Vincent, Joseph and Maria, names with the same warm, slightly old-world confidence. If your shortlist already looks like the guest list for a lovely big family wedding, you're in the right neighbourhood.

Is there a catch? Only that Anthony is so well established that it will never feel like a discovery. Nobody will ask you where you found it. But there's a quiet pleasure in choosing a name that has already done the hard work of being liked everywhere, by everyone, for a very long time.

So there it is: priceless, praiseworthy, and pronounceable in most of the world. Whether it's the one is another matter entirely, because that's the maddening bit of this whole game. You can adore a name on paper and still lie awake wondering if the baby will look more like a Vincent. Back to the list, then. It's only about four hundred names long.