Quiet perennials: a century old, never popular

Before the names

That is a genuinely unusual profile. A name that never peaked also never dated: there is no decade it belongs to, no generation that wore it, and no fashion cycle to be caught at the wrong end of.

Francesca, Colette, Gideon, Sterling, Raphael and Eve all sit here — names most people would call familiar and almost nobody would call common.

The trade is that recognition is uneven. Most people have heard these names; few have met one recently.