Moira

Moira begins in Greek myth as a word for one's allotted share — the portion fate hands out, and by extension the three sisters who measured and cut the thread of every life. The name traveled west through Ireland and Scotland as a Gaelic variant of Mary, and across much of the twentieth century it read distinctly Celtic, carried by ballerina Moira Shearer and a legion of bookish heroines. Two syllables, MOY-ra or MOR-a depending on the coast. It has an autumn quality, tweed and peat smoke, and a quiet intelligence that rarely asks for the spotlight but reliably holds it.