Raegan drifts onto the tongue like a warm breeze rolling off both the Irish Sea and, by some happy continental detour, the Ligurian coast: born from the Gaelic surname Ó Riagáin—“little king,” a title of bright cheek and quick wit—yet perfectly at home beside a plate of lemon-scented pasta sotto il sole. Though history first crowned the name on Celtic warriors, modern ears also catch a light-hearted nod to a presidential surname, giving Raegan an unexpected dash of Americana fizz. In the United States she has danced steadily upward from near-obscurity in the 1970s to a comfortable middle-chart perch—peaking around two hundredth place in 2019—rising and dipping like a gondola on gentle waves but never capsizing, proof of her quiet tenacity. Say it aloud—RAY-guhn—and you hear the quick strike of sunlight on water: crisp, lively, unafraid. For parents, Raegan offers a small yet regal promise—a crown sized for a child’s curious brow, carried with a smile as wide as the Tuscan vineyards at dusk and as green as the Kerry hills at dawn.
Jennifer Raegan Pebley is an American basketball executive and former coach and player now the general manager of the Los Angeles Sparks. |