Levi

Levi is a small name with a big, tender idea tucked inside it. From the Hebrew, it means joined, or attached, which, for a word you're about to fasten to a brand-new member of the family, is almost too on the nose. A name about belonging, given to the newest person to belong.

It's also a name on a serious upward swing. Levi has climbed into the top twenty across the English-speaking world, eleventh in Australia, sixteenth in Canada, eighteenth in the United States, twenty-fifth in New Zealand, with a healthy thirty-fifth in Brazil to boot. Interestingly, it's still finding its feet elsewhere, sitting further down the lists in England & Wales, Catalonia and France. If you like a name that feels current without being on every second birth announcement, that gap is your friend. It means you get a name that sounds thoroughly of-the-moment in Sydney or Toronto, yet still turns heads as something a little unexpected in London or Barcelona.

There's a pleasing rhythm to it, too. Two neat syllables, a soft landing, and no obvious nickname to wrangle, Levi is already about as short and warm as a name gets. It sits beautifully alongside the other gentle, old-soul names having a moment: Asher, Ezra, Micah and Judah could all be siblings without a single one feeling out of place.

For such a compact name, it has drawn a wonderfully varied cast:

• Levi Eshkol, the Israeli politician who served as prime minister.
• Levi P. Morton, once vice-president of the United States.
• Levi Strauss, the German-born American businessman.
• The actor Zachary Levi, and the fiercely popular Levi Ackerman from Attack on Titan.

Statesmen, tradesmen and cult heroes, all answering to the same four letters. What ties them together, fittingly, given the meaning, is that the name never feels fussy on any of them. Levi works on a toddler in dungarees and a grown adult in a boardroom; it's casual without being throwaway, and modern without having abandoned its ancient roots. That's a rare and useful balance. Say it once and it lands; you never have to repeat yourself down a crackly phone line or spell it out at the school gates.

So it's warm, it's rising, it means attached, and it keeps good company. And yet, you've guessed it, none of that will make the final call for you. That's the peculiar torment of naming a baby: you can love a name to bits and still hesitate right up to the moment the little one arrives to claim it. Attached, indeed. Now just a few hundred more names to gently detach from the shortlist.