Alexander

Not many names come with their own suit of armour, but Alexander does. From the Greek, it means defender of men, a big, striding, slightly heroic thing to promise, and a name that has never once sounded small.

What's clever about it is that all that grandeur is entirely optional. Give your child the full Alexander for the certificate and the speeches, then take your pick for everyday life:

• Alex, the easy, universal default that suits absolutely everyone.
• Xander, cooler, sharper, with a bit of an edge to it.
• Sasha, soft, affectionate and faintly continental.
• Al, no-nonsense, unfussy and instantly friendly.

Few names offer that much wardrobe in a single word, formal when it needs to be, and warm the rest of the time.

The rankings suggest the world appreciates the deal. Alexander sits third in Mexico City and tenth in the United States, then spreads out steadily from there: twenty-fifth in Australia, thirty-first in Argentina, thirty-sixth in England & Wales, thirty-seventh in Canada and forty-second in New Zealand, with a gentler showing at a hundred and forty-six in Catalonia. It's popular without being everywhere, familiar without being tired, the sweet spot a lot of parents spend months hunting for. Common enough to feel grounded, uncommon enough to feel considered.

It also keeps famously clever company. There's Alexander Fleming, the Scottish biologist and Nobel laureate; Alexander von Humboldt, the Prussian naturalist and explorer who seemed determined to measure the entire planet; and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian writer whose name, in its own spelling, is the same striding Alexander underneath. Scientists, explorers, writers, it's a name that has spent centuries attached to people who went and did things.

On a shortlist, it slots in beside the stately classics without any fuss. Line it up with Nicholas, Benjamin, Elizabeth and Victoria and it belongs instantly, the sort of name that suits a christening gown and a graduation gown equally well. The one honest catch is length: four syllables is a lot of name for a very small person, and you'll be spelling it out at the doctor's surgery for years. But that's rather the point. Alexander is a name to grow into, roomy enough that a child never quite outgrows it. It fits the babbling toddler and the grey-haired grandfather with equal ease.

So, defender of men, master of nicknames, keeper of excellent company. And still no guarantee it's the one, because that is the maddening magic of the whole exercise: a name can be perfect on paper and only prove itself the moment the tiny owner arrives to wear it. Wonderful work, this, exhausting, but wonderful.