A female name. Provençal Aliénor, a form of Helen (q.v.), first introduced into England by Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204), wife of Henry II, but its popularity was rather due to her descendant Eleanor of Castile (d. 1290), queen of Edward I, in whose memory her husband erected the so-called ‘Eleanor crosses’. From the 12th to the 15th C the name usually appears as Alienor, Eleanor, Elianor. Its relation to Helen was apparently recognized as late as 1604 when a list of Yorkshire recusants calls the same person indifferently Helen and Elinor. The shorter Elinor came in in the 17th C, but the spelling Elianor also occurred, and no doubt the name was pronounced sometimes as a quadrisyllable, sometimes as a trisyllable. Its use was fairly steady in the 17th and 18th C (examples are Elinor (Nell) Gwyn 1630-87, Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility (1811). Dickens’s ‘Little Nell’ (Elinor Trent) in The Old Curiosity Shop (1840) may have helped to increase the use of the name, which Charlotte Mary Yonge, History of ChristianNames, 2 vols. 1863. Revised ed. 1884, however, appears to have regarded as obsolete. Eleanor is now usually given in full, the pet-form Nell being used rather for Helen.

Alienora Curia Regis Rolls 1199, 1213. Eleanora Curia Regis Rolls 1205, 1207. Elianora Feudal Aids 1303, 1346. Alianora Feudal Aids 1428. Elyenora Hundred Rolls 1273. Elinor Yorks Rec 1604.