Most names are picked for how they sound — Samuel was given as an answer, because it means 'God has heard'

Where the name Samuel comes from

Samuel is Hebrew — Shmuel — and it walked into English out of one of the most loved stories in the Bible. Hannah had wished for a son for years; when he finally arrived, she named him Samuel 'because I asked the Lord for him'. Scholars read the name two ways, 'God has heard' or 'asked of God', and both point at the same thing: this was a child somebody longed for, and the name says so out loud. The boy in the story grew up to be the prophet who anointed two kings, which is why Samuel has never been a lightweight name — it belongs to the person the whole story listens to.

English speakers have trusted it for centuries and never let it go out of fashion. Samuel has held a place near the top of the charts across the English-speaking world for over a hundred years without a break — it never spiked like a trend, so it never dated like one. A boy named this decade shares it with the man who wrote the first great English dictionary (Samuel Johnson), the man who taught the world to talk in dots and dashes (Samuel Morse), and the man who signed his covers Mark Twain but was Samuel Clemens everywhere else. Writers, inventors and storytellers — decent company for a boy about to get a book of his own.

One more quiet advantage: Samuel is spelled the same way across most of the languages that use it. An English Samuel, a French, German, Spanish or Czech Samuel all share the identical six letters on paper — the pronunciation shifts a little from border to border, but the spelling holds. Grandparents abroad, a passport, a future school trip: this name travels without ever needing to be corrected, and the title of this book would read just as well anywhere the family lands.

Samuel, Sam, Sammy — what he'll answer to

• Samuel — The full form — what goes on the birth certificate, the school register and, if you choose it, the cover of this book. Three syllables with real weight; on a title page it reads like the name of someone a story would naturally be about.
• Sam — The everyday shape of the name and usually the one he answers to fastest — short enough to call across a park, sturdy enough that grown men carry it happily. It is also the rare nickname that became a national icon, Uncle Sam, without ever losing its small-boy friendliness.
• Sammy — The toddler-years version, favoured by grandparents and anyone who has watched him fall asleep mid-sentence. Most Samuels grow out of it around school age; most parents never quite do.
• Sam-I-Am — The breakfast-table version, on loan from Dr. Seuss. When a plate of eggs is refused on principle, few English-speaking families with a Sam in the house manage to resist the reference.