Caroline

Caroline is a perennial classic, in the Top 100 since 1994. It is now at Number 87--roughly the same position it held in 1885. Caroline has an elegant patina, calling to mind the Kennedy Camelot years and Princess Caroline of Monaco.

Caroline came to England with George II's wife, the German Queen Caroline of Ansbach in 1705, and then George IV married another German Caroline in 1795. In the US, Caroline has been a First Lady name via President Benjamin Harrison. Jane Austen named one of her less pleasant characters in Pride and Prejudice Caroline, and the name was also borne by Lady Caroline Lamb, the mistress of the poet Lord Byron, as well as the mother of the Little House on the Prairie brood.

The song "Sweet Caroline" was a huge soft-rock hit for Neil Diamond, released in 1969, and inspired by the then eleven-year-old Caroline Kennedy (for whom he sang it at her fiftieth birthday party). Carolina is the more feminine (and place name) version; the Carolyn spelling takes it a bit down-market.