Flora (given name)

Flora is a feminine given name of Latin origin meaning flower, ultimately derived from the Latin word flos, which had the genitive florus. Flora was a fertility goddess of flowers and springtime in Ancient Rome.

Flora
“Flora and the Zephyrs” by John William Waterhouse.
GenderFeminine
Origin
Word/nameLatin
Meaningflower
Other names
Related namesFflur, Fionnaghal, Fionnuala, Fiore, Fiorenza, Fleur, Flo, Flor, Flòraidh, Flore, Florence, Florencia, Florentina, Florette, Florinda, Florrie, Flossie

Feminine variants include Florrie or its Scottish Gaelic equivalent Flòraidh. Flora was also used as an English translation for the etymologically unrelated Scottish Gaelic Fionnaghal, a variant of the Irish Gaelic name Fionnuala.[1]

Other feminine variants include the Dutch Floor and Floortje, the English and French Florence, the French Fleur, Flore, and Florette, the Hungarian Flóra, the Italian Fiore and Fiorenza, the Occitan Flòra, the Sami Florá, the Portuguese and Spanish Flor and Florinda, the Spanish Florencia, and the Portuguese Florência, and the Welsh Fflur.[2]

Usage

The name came into regular use by the 1700s[3] in countries across Europe and elsewhere. The name was among the one hundred most popular names for girls in the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s and remained among the top one thousand names used for girls through 1972 and then declined. It has again risen in use in recent years and has been among the one thousand most used names for American girls since 2019.[4] It is among the top 150 names for newborn girls in Canada, where it ranked 124th on the popularity chart in 2021, with 211 uses.[5] It is also in regular use in the United Kingdom, France, and Hungary.[6]

Notable people

Fiction

Notes
  1. Hanks, Patrick; Hardcastle, Kate; Hodges, Flavia (2006). Oxford Dictionary of First Names. Oxford University Press. p. 101. ISBN 0-19-861060-2.
  2. Campbell, Mike. "The name Flora". Behind the Name.
  3. Griffin, Jennifer (2011). 1,107 Baby Names That Stand the Test of Time. Workman Publishing Company, Inc. pp. 95–96. ISBN 978-0-7611-8016-6.
  4. "Popular Baby Names". www.ssa.gov.
  5. "First names at birth by sex at birth, selected indicators". www150.statcan.gc.ca. Statistics Canada. 9 May 2023. Retrieved 3 June 2023.
  6. Campbell, Mike. "Popularity for the name Flora". Behind the Name.

See also
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