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The Victorians on both sides of the Atlantic had a "medieval revival" that brought back names from medieval times. Most of these names weren't Old English, though, but were brought by the Normans to England after the Norman Conquest and so were more "Middle English" in terms of their linguistic associations.

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Many popular authors used such names for their characters in books written during the first six decades of the 19th century, and the general public then took them up. It was a conscious revival on the part of the authors, but probably wasn't conscious on the part of most of the parents who gave the names to their real children. They were merely using names they found in the literary works.

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Emma, Clara, Ida, Bertha, Edith, Maude, Mabel, Gertrude, Ada, Ethel, Blanche, Mildred, and Alice are female examples of such medieval revival names. Harold, Walter, Roland, Guy, Alfred, Herbert, Harvey, Ralph, Edgar, Edwin, Hugh, and Arthur were male examples.

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Alvin is sort of tangentially related to the medieval revival. It seems, though, to have been mostly taken up by Americans who thought of it as a "different but not too different" alternative for Calvin, which had become popular as a first name in the USA to honor theologian John Calvin. Calvin became popular before Alvin and they were both more common in the North than the South during the early 19th century. Of course the fact that Calvin and Alvin both fit in by sound with medieval revival names like Alfred and Edwin was a part of their own popularity. (Calvin and Alvin were both much more popular in the USA than they were in Great Britain during the 19th century.)