The story
- Old English · inherited fromÆlfrǣd
- Middle English · inherited fromAlfred
- English todayAlfred
From Middle English Alfred, from Old English Ælfrǣd, from ælf (“elf”) + rǣd (“counsel”). Doublet of Alfredo and Avery. Equivalent to elf + rede. The modern pronunciation with /f/ is a spelling pronunciation; the name in Old English was pronounced with [v], as shown in its Middle English descendant Alured (in which u stands for modern v).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.