William Allchin mentions that he is a psychiatrist and is the brother of Donald [Arthur MacDonald] Allchin, a priest with a larger collection of correspondence with Merton.
Canon Arthur MacDonald (Donald) Allchin was an Anglican priest who came to know Merton through Dr. Dale Moody of the Baptist Seminary in Louisville. When he first met Merton, Allchin was at Oxford and served as librarian for Pusey House and as a student chaplain. He would later become Canon Residentiary at Canterbury Cathedral, England (source: «The Hidden Ground of Love»).
Julian Allan's title suggests he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.
Alexandre Alexeieff writes from Paris, France regarding Boris Pasternak.
Sibylle Akers was born in Dresden, Germany. She left Germany after the Second World War and moved to Texas. She was a well-known photographer. In September of 1959, she visited Gethsemani and took 26 photographs of Merton that are now part of the Merton Center collection. Akers sends letters and postcards from a visit to Europe in the mid-sixties. In 1965, she moved to Washington, D.C., because her husband was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson as Director of the U.S. Information Agency.
Mother Mary Aidan was a superior of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.
Fr. Barnabas Ahern was a Passionist priest involved in a new Catholic Bible translation effort. He offered Merton advice on biblical instruction, instruction of novices, and reviewed Merton's early manuscripts and books. See the following link for more information on Fr. Ahern: https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=92274263.
At the time of correspondence, Gregorio Pietro Cardinal Agagianian was Patriarch of Cilicia and of Armenia. He sends his letter and preface for «The Living Bread» from Beirut in December of 1955. Merton notes in a published letter to Sr. Therese Lentfoehr («The Hidden Ground of Love», p. 222) that Cardinal Agagianian's preface will not appear in the first printing of the book. However, by the first printing in 1956, it seems to have made it in.
Georges Agadjanian was a professor at Gannon College in Erie, Pennsylvania at the time of correspondence. He describes himself as a French writer preparing to write for the American audience.
Fr. M. Aelred was a Trappist Cistercian monk from Rawaseneng Monastery (also written Rawa Seneng) on the island of Java in Indonesia.
Fr. Francis Mahieu Acharya, a native of Belgium who later became a Cistercian monk there, came to India in 1955 and founded a monastery in 1958. He was a pioneer in a rebirth of Syriac monasticism and of blending it with Indian spiritual traditions, such as the Upanishads, and was later Acharya, or "teacher" (and abbot), of the Kurisumala Ashram. They became officially a part of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists) in 1988 and follow the liturgy of the Syro-Malankara Church (a Catholic Church in communion with Roman Catholicism).
Dom Inácio Accioly was abbot of the Mosteiro de São Bento in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
David Friend Aberle was a professor of anthropology at University of British Columbia whose specialty was the study of the Navajos.
Masao Abe was a Zen Buddhist scholar from Kyoto, Japan.
The Very Rev. Eric Symes Abbott, 1906-1983, was an Anglican clergyman and Dean of Westminster.