Luna

There are trend names, and then there are names that feel written into the sky. Luna is firmly the latter. It is Latin, it means quite simply "the moon", and it has that rare quality of sounding both ancient and brand new at the very same time, a lullaby and a launch pad tucked into four small letters.

Part of the appeal is how effortless it is to say. Two soft syllables, no awkward consonants to trip over, and a couple of ready-made nicknames, Lu for everyday and Lulu for when you are feeling especially fond. It is the sort of name that manages to sound affectionate even when you are telling its owner off for redecorating the wall with yoghurt, which is not nothing.

The world has clearly looked up and noticed. Luna is number 14 in the United States and glitters right across the map: number 25 in Brazil, number 27 in France, number 29 in Argentina, number 37 in Canada, number 38 in Mexico City, number 40 in Catalonia and number 48 in England and Wales. Wherever there is a night sky, it seems, there is now a small Luna toddling about somewhere beneath it.

It shines on the credits, too. Luna Blaise and Luna Maya both carry it on screen, as does Luna Mijovic. Fiction adores it every bit as much: Luna Lovegood gave the name a dreamy, marches-to-her-own-drum charm that has stuck to it ever since, and it even turns up tucked inside Lily Luna Potter, handy proof that it works a treat as a middle name if the front slot in your household is already spoken for.

Stylistically it runs with the cosmic-but-cosy crowd. Set it beside Leo, Nova, Atlas or Mila and you have a nursery that quietly sounds like a very charming star chart. It is the kind of name that ties a whole sibling set together without ever seeming to try very hard.

There is a nice steadiness to it, too, for all its dreaminess. A one-word name meaning the moon needs no explaining in any language on the planet; wherever your child ends up, people will simply know it and, more often than not, smile. That combination of the poetic and the utterly practical is rarer than it looks, and it is a large part of why the name has climbed so quickly and so quietly.

The catch, of course, is that a name this lovely is also a name plenty of other people have already spotted. That is the maddening romance of choosing, you want something magical and entirely yours alone, and the moon, frustratingly, belongs to absolutely everybody. Still, there are far worse things to share with the rest of the planet. On to the next thousand contenders, then, before the little one wakes.