Lavone

History & Origin

Lavone is a variant of Lavonne, built by attaching the popular decorative La- prefix to Yvonne. Yvonne is the French feminine of Yves, from a Germanic root meaning 'yew' — the tree whose wood made medieval bows. The La- construction was a favorite twentieth-century American way of coining pretty new names from existing ones; Lavone is one such coinage.

It was always rare in this spelling — a few dozen girls a year at its faint peak in the mid-nineteen-twenties — while Lavonne and Yvonne were more usual. It reads as a genuine mid-century coinage; charming but dated, it has stayed obscure rather than joined any revival.