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HelpActually
in reply to a message by Tuesday
Alison doesn't have a -son ending, it has an -on ending, it was a medieval nn for Alice (http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/talan/reaney/reaney.cgi?Alison). Endings like -on and -ot were often used to create pet forms, like Marion for Mary, Magot for Margaret, Belot for Isabel.
I think Alison / Allison is actually a rare case of a girls' name being used for as a boys as it wasn't originally a boys' name.
I think Alison / Allison is actually a rare case of a girls' name being used for as a boys as it wasn't originally a boys' name.
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I think that perhaps Allison / Alison is a case of two separate etymologies paralleling each other. After all, there are people with the surname Allison: http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/fact.aspx?fid=7&ln=allison&fn= (and http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/fact.aspx?&fid=10&ln=allison&fn=&yr=1920 ; though I don't know how accurate their meanings are, it seems pretty fair).
So boys called Allison were in reference to the surname, and girls called Allison in the -on tradition, perhaps?
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So boys called Allison were in reference to the surname, and girls called Allison in the -on tradition, perhaps?
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I never knew that
I always presumed that the surname Allison / Alison just came from the fn Alison (like other fns have been used for surnames, eg James).
I was going to look up Alison as a surname but I left my Oxford dictionary of surnames up in Stirling and for some reason Oxford Reference Online only has it's firstname and placename dictionaries on the internet (very annoying as I haven't come across anything to beat it yet).
I always presumed that the surname Allison / Alison just came from the fn Alison (like other fns have been used for surnames, eg James).
I was going to look up Alison as a surname but I left my Oxford dictionary of surnames up in Stirling and for some reason Oxford Reference Online only has it's firstname and placename dictionaries on the internet (very annoying as I haven't come across anything to beat it yet).
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