Alison

Originally a medieval Norman French diminutive of Alice, which itself traces to the Germanic Adalheidis. The spelling appears as early as fourteenth-century English verse before fading and quietly resurfacing in the twentieth century. American parents picked it up in earnest during the late 1970s as an unadorned single-L alternative to the heavier double-L standard.

The name reads as capable, organized, and slightly collegiate. With an average age around thirty-nine, an Alison is typically pictured somewhere between a graduate seminar and an office with labeled binders. She has spent a significant portion of her adult life clarifying that there is only one l in the middle. The name carries an air of someone who returns borrowed library books on time.