Carice

Combination of Caroline and Alice. This is at least the case for Carice Irene Elgar (1890-1970), the only child of the renowned English composer Edward Elgar (1857-1934). She was named after her mother, Caroline Alice Roberts (1848-1920).

In turn, the Dutch actress Carice van Houten (b. 1976) was named after Elgar's daughter. Her father Theodore van Houten (1952-2016) was a Dutch-British musicologist who had studied Elgar's work and published a famous article about it in 1976, i.e. the same year Carice was born.

Last but not least, the recent rise in popularity of the name Carice in the Netherlands can be entirely attributed to Carice van Houten. Her career really began to kick off with the Dutch film Minoes (2001), in which she played the titular character. But the definite breakthrough came with the film Zwartboek (2006), which was a huge success and later voted as the best Dutch film of all time. It is therefore no coincidence that the name Carice sharply rose in popularity after 2006, ultimately reaching its peak in 2009.