Evelyn

Some names feel like a warm cardigan on a cold morning. Evelyn is one of them, gentle, familiar, faintly old-fashioned in the very best way, and lately enjoying a proper, well-deserved revival.

The meaning is where it gets delightfully indecisive. Evelyn is English, and it's given two readings: desired child or, rather more unexpectedly, hazelnut. Take your pick, because honestly both are wonderful. One is a whole heart's worth of longing wrapped up in a name; the other is small, warm, autumnal and just a little bit cosy. Together they make Evelyn feel deeply loved and thoroughly down-to-earth at the same time, which is a rare and rather comforting mix.

It softens beautifully, too. There's the sweet, sing-song Evie for the toddler years and the simple, timeless Eve for later on, two nicknames that carry a person neatly from the cot all the way to the corner office. The full name sits somewhere gracefully in between, dressed up but never stiff.

The charts have warmed to it all over again. Evelyn sits at number 9 in the United States, 13 in Australia and 15 in Canada, then 20 in both England and Wales and New Zealand. It thins out considerably further afield, 116 in Mexico City, 153 in Brazil, 186 in Argentina, which rather suits its character. This is a name that feels most at home in the English-speaking world, cosy and familiar, without being on absolutely every register in every country.

It has a bookish, thoughtful streak in its history, too. Consider the English writer Evelyn Beatrice Hall, proof the name has long belonged to people who chose their words with care. There's something quietly literary about it, a sense of libraries and long afternoons, that only adds to the vintage charm.

On a shortlist, Evelyn is a wonderfully easy fit. Set it beside Oliver, Charlotte, Amelia and Henry and you have a sibling group that sounds gently timeless, the kind of names that would look equally at home in a black-and-white photograph or a nursery painted this year. It's soft without being frilly, classic without being severe, and it never tries too hard.

So do you write it down? That's the fond, familiar agony of the whole undertaking. A name can mean a longed-for child and a cosy little hazelnut, shorten two sweet ways and slot neatly into any sibling row, and you'll still lie awake turning it over, wondering whether it truly suits the small newcomer on the way. Evelyn makes a warm and gentle case for itself, but the last word, as ever, belongs to a person who hasn't yet arrived to give it.