Date
Gender Feminine
Usage Carolingian Cycle
Meaning & History
Used by Ludovico Ariosto in his poem Orlando Furioso (1532), where it belongs to a sorceress who abducts Ruggiero. Ariosto may have borrowed the name from the mythological Alcinoe or directly from the Greek word ἀλκή (alke) meaning "strength, prowess". George Frideric Handel adapted the story into his opera Alcina in 1735.