Flower Names for Girls (with Meanings & Popularity)

Petal is the soft and sweet-smelling name of a character in the novel and film, The Shipping News. With the rise of such flower names as Poppy and Posy, we believe Petal — down-to-earth yet romantic — has its own appealingly distinctive style.

A rarer-than-rare botanical name with a sting in the tail - makes an interesting masculine option that fits in with Aspen, Lark and Arthur.

Pansy is an early floral name that lost credibility when it became a derogatory slang term for gay people. Better these days: Posy or Poppy.

Malti is an Indian floral name from the plant madhumalti — a tropical flowering vine that is known in English as the Rangoon creeper. In India, Madhu and Malti are often used as twin names or as a first/middle name combination.

Pema is related to the more familiar Hindu name Padma and means lotus flower. This delightful name was given to only 14 girls in the USA last year, so it's guaranteed to be a unique choice. Pema is probably most familiar to Westerners through Buddhist nun Pema Chodron and through Jetsun Pema, the Dalai Lama's sister.

Thallo, the Greek goddess of spring, buds, and blooms has a decidedly less flowery name than her Roman counterpart, Flora. Thallo is one of the Horae in Greek mythology: goddesses associated with the cycle of life, growth and the seasons.

Historically, the French and English name Florence was used for both sexes. And Florent is a steady classic in France, booming there in the 1980s. Maybe it's time to import it, and show that boys can be floral too.

Feisty floral name that would work better as a middle name than as a first, so called because of the flower's resemblance to a dragon's open mouth.

A pretty plant with pink or lilac flowers.

Yes, though it seems so extreme, girls were actually sometimes given this name a century ago; now it is so uncommon it would make a strong springtime statement. Biggest obstacle: the nickname Daffy.

Fiorello is one of the few floral names that works well for a boy. The colorful three-term World War II New York Mayor La Guardia made this one famous -- in fact he was nicknamed "the Little Flower". His life was the basis for the 1959 musical called, appropriately, "Fiorello!"

Vivacious but lightweight.

A very floral option that somehow doesn't sound too flowery, perhaps because Lily and Rose are so well-known and well-used as given names. As a hyphenated name, Lily-Rose is in the UK Top 400, while Lilyrose itself is given to 7 babies each year. Lilly-Rose is also in the UK Top 700 while Lillie-Rose sits just outside the Top 1000, so while Lilyrose is rare, the sounds are familiar and often used together.

This is a rare and lovely form of Susannah commonly heard in Israel. Shoshana Shapiro — nicknamed Shosh — is the character played by Zosia Mamet on the hit HBO series Girls — a fact that could give the name an upward thrust.

Known in America via the wife of Soviet head Mikhail Gorbachev; a possibility for parents of Eastern-European descent wanting to move beyond Natasha and Nadia or for parents from the Middle East looking for a name that works in both cultures.

Most ella names are hot, but this is one that won't catch fire because of the disagreeable connotations of prunes.

Begonia is a pretty flower named for French administrator and amateur horticulturalist Michel Bégon, who was an avid naturalist but also a proponent of slavery. A rare floral choice which has never really caught on as a baby name, Begonia would certainly stand out from the Lilys and Roses.

The Vietnamese name Quynh, pronounced exactly like the Irish gender neutral name Quinn, is a perfect cross-cultural choice with a lovely meaning.

Shakespeare seems to have coined this name for the Prince of Bohemia in his late tragicomedy The Winter's Tale by drawing inspiration from the Latin floris meaning "flower". It's rarely been used as a name in real life, but we think it has potential. The flowery sound will appeal to parents looking for less conventionally masculine boys names, but the "Z" gives it an edge and cool factor lacking in, say, Florian. Plus, the Shakespeare connection obviously gives it a lot of literary cred.

Caspia is both a feminization of the rising star Caspian, and the name of a flower that often grows near the sea or on salt marshes. Likely derived from the Latin term Caspii, meaning "white", Caspia could make an unexpected full name for Cassie or perhaps an alternative to Juniper.