Ilona

Ilona is the Hungarian cousin of Helen, descended from the Greek Helene with its aura of light or shining one. It migrated north through Finland and the Baltic, where its three liquid syllables feel perfectly at home against long vowels and open landscapes. In Hungarian folklore Tündér Ilona is the fairy queen of the forest, a figure of enchantment and half-wild beauty. The name has never crowded American charts, which preserves its slight hush of another language. Stress the first syllable, let the second dissolve, and you have a name with birch leaves in it.