who the bleep is alys?

You'll recall my mild surprise at people's level of confusion when we decided to Welsh it up a bit on the arrival of our first child and call her Nia. Well, we decided to Welsh it up a notch again when our second daughter was born in March of this year and call her Alys. Cue potential confusion of a slightly different kind, as this is pronounced the same as, and is the Welsh variant of, the perfectly commonplace English name Alice. So Alys' cross to bear through life will most likely be people constantly spelling her name wrong, rather than the more fundamental refusal to believe that it actually is a name that Nia will get. But adversity, and triumphing over it, builds character, and I'm pretty confident that both girls will thank us for it later.

Anyway, I thought I'd do the Google predictive search thing again, and this is what I got back:

I have to confess that none of those people are familiar names to me, but I'm sure they're marvellous and worthwhile people in their own right. Anyway:

• Alys Fowler is a journalist and occasional TV presenter on Gardener's World;
• Alys Williams was apparently a contestant on the BBC series The Voice. It's very snobbish of me to affect a haughty ignorance and disdain for what goes on on such shows, but there you are, I'm doing it anyway;
• Alys Einion is an author and lecturer whose name may possibly be a shortened version of Alyson;
• Alys Carlton is a lawyer.

Other notable Alys's include the daughter of Owain Glyndŵr, Welsh swimmer (and double namesake) Alys Thomas, a minor Game of Thrones character, and the protagonist of the eponymous S4C drama series.