Aoife

Aoife comes from the Old Irish Aífe, usually linked with the word óiph, meaning beauty or radiance. Several women of this name appear in Irish mythology, including a warrior woman in the Ulster Cycle who bore a son to the hero Cú Chulainn, and the jealous stepmother in the tale of the Children of Lir, who turned her stepchildren into swans. In history, Aoife MacMurrough, daughter of Diarmait Mac Murchada, king of Leinster, married the Norman lord Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, a union that helped open Ireland to Norman settlement. The name is sometimes treated as an Irish equivalent of Eve.