Alaia

Alaia has at least two lineages walking alongside each other. In Basque it means "joyful" or "cheerful," and in Arabic it carries the sense of "exalted" or "sublime." The fashion world knows it through Azzedine Alaia, the Tunisian-French couturier who dressed Tina Turner and Grace Jones, and that association lends the name an unmistakable chic. In the U.S. it surged into the top 200 in the late 2010s, helped along by the broader rise of three-vowel girls' names. Ah-LYE-ah flows without any hard edges, which is part of its appeal. A name with runway poise and genuine warmth underneath.