Aaliyah

Aaliyah is a name with a specific American memory attached: the R&B singer who recorded Are You That Somebody and Rock the Boat before her death at twenty-two, and who made the name ring on radio throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. The root is the Arabic and Hebrew Aliyah, exalted or ascending, a word that also names the Jewish migration to Israel. Since her debut the name has remained a staple of Black American naming culture and now sits around the top 93 overall. Aaliyah moves in three flowing syllables, open vowels on either side of a soft middle, lyrical and unmistakably hers.