Melanie

Melanie comes from the Greek adjective melas, feminine melaina, meaning black or dark. The word named a colour first. Only later did it settle on people, and from the same root grew the fuller form Melania and the short, plain Mela.

The clearest early bearer is Saint Melania the Younger, a Roman noblewoman of the fourth and fifth centuries who sold off an enormous inheritance and founded monasteries in the Holy Land. In the Polish calendar her imieniny land on the 31st of December, closing the year. The dark in her name never meant anything grim about her.

English and German speakers carried Melanie into common use much later, and the spelling with that final -ie became the familiar one. A girl named Melanie today may never think of melaina at all. The meaning stays where it began, in black and dark.