Leonardo

Some names ask you to say the whole thing, and they're worth the breath. Leonardo is one of them: four unhurried syllables that roll out like a red carpet and somehow never trip over their own grandeur.

The meaning does most of the swaggering. From a Germanic root, Leonardo means brave lion, which is, let's be honest, an absurdly good thing to hand a person at birth. Courage and a mane in a single word. It's the sort of name that sounds like it should arrive to trumpets, and yet, thanks to a generous supply of nicknames, it never has to be pompous about it.

That's the clever part. All that regal length collapses, whenever you fancy, into the sunny Leo or the cheeky Lenny. So your child can be Leonardo on the certificate and the school prize list, and Leo in the garden, and Lenny when they've tracked mud through the hall. One name, three moods, no compromises.

It's a properly international pick, too, with a soft spot for warmer climates. Leonardo sits at number 7 in Mexico City and 45 in Brazil, then travels on to 86 in the United States, 99 in Catalonia, 112 in Australia, 124 in England and Wales, 152 in Argentina and 178 in Canada. Popular and dignified, in other words, without ever tipping into overexposed.

And the company it keeps is frankly dazzling. There is Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian Renaissance polymath who more or less set the bar for what a curious human mind can do, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who has kept the name glinting under Hollywood lights for a generation. The footballer Leonardo Bonucci lends it some defensive steel, and, because a brave lion belongs in a good adventure, there's the blue-masked, sword-swinging Leonardo of a certain heroic cartoon quartet. Genius, film star, athlete, cartoon hero: the name genuinely does it all.

On a shortlist, Leonardo brings the drama and lets its siblings relax. Set it beside Sofia, Matteo, Isabella and Gabriel and you have a family that sounds like it summers somewhere with excellent food and better light. It's ornate without being fussy, classic without feeling dusty, a rare and useful balance.

So do you write it down in full, lion and all? That is the delicious agony of the whole endeavour. A name can mean courage, shorten three lovely ways, chart across two continents and keep company with a bona fide genius, and still you'll lie awake wondering whether such a big name suits such a small newcomer. Leonardo roars a convincing case for itself, but the crown, as ever, waits on a tiny person who is yet to pad into the room.