Jordan

The name Jordan begins with a river. In Hebrew it is Yarden, from a root that means to descend, to flow down, the water that drops from the northern hills toward the Dead Sea. The short meaning holds close to that source: descending, flowing down.

English speakers did not coin the word themselves. Medieval crusaders came home from the Holy Land with flasks of Jordan water for baptism, and some of the children christened that way were given the river's name. From there it settled into English for girls and boys alike, and by the later Middle Ages it was a common surname too.

Today it reads as thoroughly English. A child called Jordan on a Polish class register carries no visible sign of the Hebrew start. The link to water stays intact. Whatever else the name means to the person who answers to it, Jordan still says one plain thing: flowing down.