Oliver

Oliver comes from the Latin oliva, meaning olive tree. The olive stood for peace and for the oil that anointed kings, so the word meant more than a fruit long before it became anyone's given name.

The name reached England with the Normans. In the medieval French epic The Song of Roland, Olivier is Roland's level-headed companion, the friend who counsels caution before the doomed stand at Roncevaux. English took up that form and kept it, and by the later Middle Ages Oliver was common enough to leave its mark on surnames and villages.

Centuries after, Oliver Cromwell gave the name a harder ring in England, and for a time some families there used it warily. Then it recovered. In recent years it has climbed back to the top of the birth registers for boys in England and Wales. Strip away the history and one thing holds steady underneath: oliva, the olive tree.