Italian word name meaning 'joyful, lively, cheerful,' used as a given name since the Renaissance.
Allegra comes straight from the Italian musical lexicon — it is the feminine form of allegro, the tempo marking directing musicians to play in a lively, brisk, and cheerful manner. The word itself derives from the Latin alacer, meaning "lively, brisk, eager," and its musical meaning has been standard in European composition since at least the 17th century. As a given name, Allegra began appearing in Italy in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, when the fashion for using musical and emotional terms as names reflected a humanist delight in expressive language.
The name simply means "joyful" or "lively," and carries with it the irreducible optimism of a major key. The name's most storied bearer in English literary history is Allegra Byron, the illegitimate daughter of Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont. Born in 1817 and dead by age five in an Italian convent, little Allegra Byron lived a brief, tragic life that became entangled in the romantic and political dramas of her father and of Mary and Percy Shelley.
Byron's grief at her death was genuine, and the name was ever after shadowed by that romantic melancholy — joyfulness tinged with loss, which is arguably the most Byronic of combinations. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a great admirer of Byron, named her own beloved dog Flush — but it is said she considered Allegra for a child. In the United States, Allegra gained unexpected modern recognition when the antihistamine Allegra (fexofenadine) was introduced in the 1990s — a branding choice that has generated much commentary on whether pharmaceutical associations help or hurt a name's human appeal.
The consensus seems to be: very little. The name remains genuinely lovely, and its bearers include Allegra Versace, niece of Gianni Versace. For parents who love music, Italy, or simply the idea that a name can itself be a small piece of beauty, Allegra delivers.