Roman

Some names tiptoe into the room. Roman strides in like it owns the place, which, historically speaking, it rather did.

It is Latin to the core, and its meaning is about as grand as five little letters can manage: a citizen of Rome. Hand that to a baby and you have essentially enrolled them in the most famous city in history before they can hold their own head up. There is a lovely solidity to it, too, the sort of name that sounds equally at home on an ancient senator, a modern footballer, or a toddler flinging spaghetti at the wall.

And it travels beautifully. Roman sits at number 32 in England & Wales, number 44 in New Zealand and number 45 in Argentina, with a comfortable place in the Australian, American and Canadian charts too, and it even turns up at number 97 down in Mexico City. Wherever there are baby-name lists, a small Roman is usually somewhere on them, quietly holding court.

It keeps dignified company as well. There is Roman Herzog, once the president of Germany, and Roman Jakobson, the Russian linguist whose ideas still rattle around every language classroom going. Statesman and scholar: not a bad pair of shadows to have attached to your name from day one.

Style-wise it plays nicely with the current taste for strong, rounded boys' names. Line it up beside Mateo and Santiago, or alongside sisters like Camila and Valeria, and it clicks straight into place. It even comes with nicknames on tap if you want them, Rome for the wanderers and Romy for the softer days, though plenty of parents will happily leave it exactly as it stands.

So is Roman the one? That is the gloriously maddening part of this whole naming business: a name can arrive with an empire's worth of gravitas and you will still circle it, cross it out, and circle it again at half past two in the morning. Citizen of Rome or not, it has to earn its spot on the shortlist like everyone else. Only a few hundred more to rule out.