Arlene

name

name ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A female given name originating as a coinage.

    "Mama hated her own name, Arlene. "Arlene, Marlene, Darlene, they're all hayseed names," she deplored. Even more than Arlene, she hated Lena, which she'd been called in school, growing up."

Example

More examples

"Mama hated her own name, Arlene. "Arlene, Marlene, Darlene, they're all hayseed names," she deplored. Even more than Arlene, she hated Lena, which she'd been called in school, growing up."

Etymology

A nineteenth-century coinage probably based on similar-sounding names such as Charlene and Arlette.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.