Of course it could work, but it would take more of an explanation behind it, like your brother being called "Mippee". If I was to meet someone called
Alayna, I wouldn't naturally fall to calling her
Anya, is all I'm saying, just because the name contains some of the same letters. I could conceivably be called "
Leo" for short, because some people misread my name as "
Cleo", but, again,
Leo is not a NATURAL shortening of
Chloe just because it has the letters for it. Know what I mean?
As a reader, I wouldn't buy an
Alayna being called
Anya, unless she lived in some kind of Slavic culture. It would seem forced. I would think it was a typo of "Ayna" that had never been fixed. Just saying.