Alessia? But we’re not Italian

[OneMoreCoffee3]

Looking at girls names for my fourth, we don’t know the sex. We heard the name Alessia when watching a free diving documentary a few years ago and have toyed with it. Baby will be ethnically Chinese/ Irish mixed and raised in England

Yes lovely

I think it's a lovely name. I don't think it's a big deal that you don't have Italian heritage. Francesca and Gemma are Italian names too and that didn't stop Irish and British parents in the 1980s/90s from giving those names to their daughters. Italian names are not unknown in the Irish community because of religious connections anyway. My own name is technically Italian too but commonly used in English - Italians I meet sometimes tell me that I have an Italian name, which is nice!

Yes, we found our daughter’s name on my family tree. My nanna’s aunt was Marcella and she was Irish. We figured it must have been a religious choice.

We have an Alessia in my husband's family and also a male second cousin Alessio, they are both called Ale for short ( like Alex without the x) which is the usual way to shorten it in Italy. It's a lovely name, so why not use it!

Late to this thread but adding a thought since the pronunciation question came up. Alessia is ah-LESS-yah in Italian (stress on the middle syllable), and it is one of those names that sits comfortably in several languages at once. It reads Italian, but it is easy to say in English and it does not belong to one culture so tightly that using it without Italian heritage feels like borrowing.

On the ‘will people ask if you’re Italian’ point: probably occasionally, but that is more curiosity than criticism. Names like this have been crossing borders for a long time, and Alessia in particular has the same shape as plenty of names English speakers already know, so most people will just hear it as pretty rather than foreign.

One practical thing worth mentioning: Less or Lessie are the likely nicknames whether you plan for them or not, and Alessia does not really shorten to anything else, so if you love the full name but hate Less, that matters more than the heritage question.

If the appeal is ‘distinctive but travels well’, it is worth browsing a list of popular Italian girl names to see the wider set with that same quality. (italiangirlnames.com/popular-italian-girl-names/ ) Names like Ginevra, Aurora and Vittoria are hugely popular in Italy right now and sit in a similar space: unmistakably Italian but easy for English speakers to say and spell.

Never heard of this before. It's a lovely name.

Cute, I didn’t know it was Italian!