Aine - Name Meaning and Popularity -

Meaning of Aine

Áine—commonly rendered without its diacritic as Aine and pronounced in Irish as AWN-yuh—traces to Old Irish áine “radiance, splendor” and first surfaces in early Celtic lore as the name of the summer goddess who bestowed sovereignty and agricultural plenty, a provenance that anchors the modern given name in themes of light and legitimate rule. Despite its clearly Gaelic phonology, the designation has exhibited a measured, decades-long durability in the United States, typically occupying ranks in the low- to mid-800s and recording somewhere between forty and sixty births annually, a distribution that signals selective but enduring adoption among parents attentive to cultural specificity. Its mytho-historical pedigree, reinforced by periodic appearances in Irish literature and ethnographic scholarship, endows the name with an academic nuance, while its compact orthography and fluid trochaic stress render it both visually distinctive and phonetically accessible within contemporary Anglo-American usage.