Alison

Alison reaches back to a Greek root, and the sense it holds is noble. English speakers took the name up and kept it, so its home has long been England rather than the Mediterranean. It travels with no diminutive or variant alongside it. The name stands on its own.

In Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, from the late fourteenth century, the young wife at the centre of The Miller's Tale is named Alisoun. That spelling shows how the name sounded to English ears six hundred years ago, well before the modern Alison settled into place. A reader meets her early.

The meaning stayed steady while the spelling shifted. To be noble, in the old sense behind the name, was a matter of rank and bearing rather than temperament. A child on a Polish class register today carries none of that background openly, only a short English name and the plain gloss beside it: szlachetna, noble.