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I like this name, it looks and sounds quite nice. There's also a well-known area of my hometown called Ellice, with the same pronunciation. There's something kind of romantic about Ellis, in a melancholy yet hopeful way. I think because it puts me in mind of Ellis Island, a place where so many people came hoping for a better life and yet it was also a lonely, confusing, coldly bureaucratic place. I think of all those haunting official photographs of immigrants, and that scene in The Godfather where young Vito Corleone was given a new name and quarantined all alone. Ellis has a ghostly sort of aura for me.

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It works on all genders for me. Ellie is a cute idea for a nickname, very logical. But for some reason I'd want to spell it "Elly".