Alena

The name Alena comes from the Slavic lands, where it grew as a short form of Helena. From that older name it kept one portable meaning: light, shining. The brightness sat already in the Greek root behind Helena, and Alena held onto the sense while letting the first syllable drop away.

So the meaning of light is old, though it reaches Alena secondhand, by way of Helena rather than from any Slavic word for brightness. That is worth saying plainly. The form is Slavic, the use is Slavic, and only the meaning was inherited from elsewhere.

On a class register in a Polish school, Alena reads clearly beside Helena and its longer cousins, four letters and two soft vowels. Anyone meeting it there receives the origin without translation: a Slavic form of Helena, and with it the sense of light.