Layla

Some names glow best in broad daylight. Layla belongs firmly to the evening. It is Arabic, and it means, simply and beautifully, "night", which lends it a smoky, lyrical quality that very few names on the average shortlist can hope to match. There is genuine poetry baked into it before you have even reached the birth certificate.

It helps enormously that it is a real joy to say, all soft vowels and gentle landings. It shortens happily to Lay, and it will even borrow the cheerful Lulu when the mood happens to call for it. Lyrical on the page, playful out loud, it somehow manages to be two quite different things at once without ever appearing to try very hard at either.

The name has drifted a very long way beyond its roots. Layla sits at number 24 in the United States and turns up all over the map: number 39 in New Zealand, number 41 in Australia, number 50 in Canada and number 56 in England and Wales, thinning to number 131 in Brazil, number 300 in Catalonia and number 403 in Argentina. Common enough to feel familiar, uncommon enough in places to still turn a head or two at the school gate.

It carries some seriously impressive artistic pedigree, too. Layla al-Akhyaliyya was a celebrated Umayyad-era poet, renowned for her eloquence and sheer force of personality, while Layla Al-Attar made her name as a painter. Layla Balabakki added a literary chapter of her own as an author, and Layla El brought it into the world of performance. Poets, painters and performers alike, this is a name with genuine form behind it.

It sits comfortably among the current soft-but-strong favourites. Pair it with Maya, Leo, Zara or Noah and you have a sibling set that feels effortlessly modern and just a touch mysterious around the edges.

The Arabic roots give it a depth that goes well beyond mere fashion, too. A name that means night carries centuries of poetry and longing behind it, and yet it never feels weighed down by any of that history, it wears its meaning lightly, like a favourite song you half-remember. That mix of the ancient and the effortlessly current is a rare thing to find on a shortlist, and it is precisely why the name keeps quietly climbing.

The only real trouble is that a name this atmospheric tends to cast a long shadow right across every other option on your list. That is the sweet torment of choosing, you find something lyrical and lovely, then spend the next fortnight quietly terrified there is something even better waiting a page or two further on. There isn't a rush. Well. Not much of one, anyway.