Elaine

The name entered English as an Old French vernacular form of Helen, derived from the Greek Helēnē. It gained nineteenth-century literary currency through Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King, which featured the Arthurian figure Elaine of Astolat. American record-keepers first noted it in 1880, after which parents gradually adopted it as a lighter, French-accented alternative to Helen.

The name reads as a woman who still owns an address book filled with crossed-out pencil marks. It suggests an era when dinner parties involved gelatin molds and someone always brought a signature potato salad. Over half of living Elaines belong to the baby boom generation, with an average age sitting squarely at sixty-five. The name carries the distinct cadence of someone who will listen patiently to an explanation and then do things the original way regardless.