Alani

Alani comes from Hawaiian, where it names the orange tree and its fruit, a word scented with citrus groves and trade winds. The three syllables fall lightly, ah-LAH-nee, with the gentle lilt that Polynesian names carry into English. It doubles as a feminine form of the Irish Alan in some readings, but the Hawaiian thread is the stronger one, tied to the islands' long tradition of nature names. Alani climbed quickly into the U.S. top 200 over the past decade, currently at 178, riding a broader wave of melodic three-syllable girls' names. Sunlit, warm, quietly elsewhere.