Iris

Most names have a meaning you need to look up. Iris has a meaning you could paint. It comes from Greek and means, simply and gloriously, rainbow.

That is a lot of colour to pack into four letters, but Iris carries it off without breaking a sweat. It is crisp and quick to say, with a soft hiss at the end, and it manages to sound both old-fashioned and completely of the moment. Very few names can be at home in a sepia photograph and on a brand-new nursery door at the same time.

A rainbow with a personality

The rainbow meaning is not just a pretty translation. In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Iris was the personification of the rainbow itself. So your daughter would be sharing a name with a figure who quite literally embodied the arc of colour across a stormy sky. No pressure, little one.

The real-world namesakes are just as vivid. Iris Murdoch, the Irish-born British writer and philosopher, gives the name serious intellectual clout. Iris Apfel, the American interior designer and fashion icon, gives it an enormous amount of style. Iris Mittenaere, the French beauty pageant winner, adds a dash of glamour. And comic fans will know Iris West, who appears in comic books published by DC Comics. Philosophy, fashion, pageantry and superheroes: a proper spectrum, which feels only right.

France has fallen hard

If you want to see how loved Iris is right now, look to France, where it sits at number 18. Catalonia has it at 56, and England & Wales at 61, which means you will hear it in British playgrounds without it feeling everywhere.

Further out it gets gently rarer: 94 in New Zealand, 106 in Canada, 119 in Brazil, 120 in Mexico City and 127 in the United States on its 2020 figures. That is a beautifully even spread, a name that is recognised wherever it goes but not quite worn smooth yet.

Iris plays nicely with a sibling list too. Picture it alongside Lucas, Gabriel, Alice or Ines and you get a set of names that are classic but light on their feet, the sort that sound lovely shouted down a beach at teatime.

There is no real nickname to speak of, and frankly there is no need for one. Iris is already short, already complete, and already a little bit magic. It suits a giggling baby in a sunhat as easily as it suits a formidable woman in her nineties who still runs the local book club.

Of course, a rainbow is famously hard to catch, and so is the perfect name. You can circle one on a list for months and then wobble the moment the midwife asks. Naming a person is lovely, ridiculous work like that. But if you want something short, bright and quietly brilliant, Iris might be the pot of gold at the end of your search.