Ilene

An American phonetic respelling of Eileen, which itself derives from the Irish Eibhlín. The original Irish name is typically traced to the Norman French Aveline or the Greek Helen. The I-initial spelling caught on in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century as parents favored direct English phonetics.

An Ilene sounds like someone who keeps a neat ledger and knows how to hem a skirt by hand. The name carries the specific, practical flavor of mid-twentieth-century America. Almost half of all living bearers belong to the baby boomer generation. It reads as a name given by parents who wanted a modern sound without straying from standard spelling logic.