Angelica

Angelica comes from the Latin angelicus, meaning "angelic," a word that runs back through Church Latin to the Greek angelos, a messenger. The short English sense sits right on that root. Angelic, and little else hidden beneath.

The name found warm homes in English and Italian. Italian keeps all four syllables ringing, an-ge-li-ca, and that last open vowel lifts the ending in a way English tends to clip.

There is a plant that holds the word too. Angelica archangelica grows tall across northern Europe, and cooks have candied its green stems for cakes since medieval times. Botanists tied the "arch-angel" to a belief that the herb flowered near an archangel's feast day. Put Angelica on a school class register and it lands high, up among the A names. In Polish the meaning comes out as anielska.