Opening name…
Opening name…
A name. A world of connections.
Historical reference account (1884)
Language contexts for this entry: not recorded
Matching spellings may have different histories. Explore matching entries
No sourced pronunciation yet
01 / Meaning & origin
Alà is a masculine given name.
No etymology is recorded in our sources for this spelling yet. The record exists because the name is documented in use; a meaning will be shown only once a cited source supports it.
02 / Across borders
Explore published naming statistics and documented language connections around the world.
The name atlas
0
countries in our sources
Select a country to follow Alà’s connections around the world.
0 countries with published statistics. Language records show cultural connections; they do not measure how common a name is.
Selected country
Our sources do not yet connect this name with a country. New records will appear here as coverage grows.
No country coverage is recorded yet.
03 / By the numbers
Follow the spelling through the years, one published dataset at a time.
No official statistics are imported for this spelling. No statistical dataset covering this spelling has been imported yet. See data coverage.
04 / Through time
Passages quoted verbatim from public-domain reference works. They reflect the scholarship of their time, not current consensus, and may use obsolete spellings.
Ala— “holy (?)”
Leaving this, as not belonging to our main subject, we find that Helgi, the Norse form of the word for this holy old mythic king, was exceedingly popular in the North. Helgi has a poem to himself in the elder _Edda_. A son of Burnt Njal was called Helgi, and forty-two cases are found of the name in the _Landnama-bok_, and thirty-four of its feminine, Helga. In Domesday there are five called Helgi, besides fourteen Algars, very possibly meant for Holger; and it may be…
Leaving this, as not belonging to our main subject, we find that Helgi, the Norse form of the word for this holy old mythic king, was exceedingly popular in the North. Helgi has a poem to himself in the elder _Edda_. A son of Burnt Njal was called Helgi, and forty-two cases are found of the name in the _Landnama-bok_, and thirty-four of its feminine, Helga. In Domesday there are five called Helgi, besides fourteen Algars, very possibly meant for Holger; and it may be suspected that the Helie of the early Norman barons may have been as much due to the Helgi of their forefathers as to the prophet whom they learnt to know on Mount Carmel. Perhaps, too, Helga was the source of Ala, or Ela, by which name a good many Norman ladies are recorded, the best known of whom was Ela, heiress of Salisbury, the wife of one William Longsword and mother of the other, one of the founders of Salisbury Cathedral, and the witness of a vision of her son’s death in Egypt.
Yonge, History of Christian Names (1884), Part VI, Chapter V (The Karling Romances), Section VII (Ogier le Danois) · Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
A little story to keep
Take the story of Alà with you. Create a personal name passport with its meaning, roots and connections.
06 / Behind the facts
Review status: Source-reported — no editorial review recorded yet. Last data change 2026-10-15.
Wiktionary text: CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikidata: CC0. Commons recordings retain their individual file licences. Complete attribution is available in each group above and alongside each chart.
