Naming My Girls

Linnea, Holly, and now Alyssa.  These were the names I had used for my daughters.  It started with Linnea.  That was a tiny little wild flower Grandma Johnson used pick when she was a girl in Sweden.  I loved the sound of that name, and I decided when I was about ten that I would name my first daughter Linnea.

Grandma Johnson also shared with me her love of flowers.  I loved her yard.  She grew sweet peas, roses, verbena, honeysuckle, gardenias, pansies, and a host of other lovely things.  Since I had decided to name my first daughter after a flower, why not use flower names for all of my girls?

Heather was my next choice, (I loved reading English stories), but my second daughter was born at Christmas, so of course she needed to be named Holly.  Then we had a son.  I didn't think he would be happy with me if I named him after a flower, (remember the song A Boy Named Sue?) but it was kind of fun to find russeleanthus in a nursery one day.  I planted them around our house, but we never called Russell that.

By the time I was expecting our fourth baby I had decided to save Heather for awhile.  We had a special neighbor (she was actually a 2nd cousin of ours) who I just loved to babysit for.  Her oldest daughter was named Alicia, and I would have liked to name a daughter after her, but that wasn't a flower.  One day I was looking through a baby name book and I found Alyssa.  The book said Alyssa was a little yellow, extinct Greek flower.  Cool!  That was as close to Alicia as I was ever going to get!  So when our fourth baby was a girl I named her Alyssa.

I was sure I would have more daughters, and I had other names picked out.  I still wanted a Heather until my little sister Linda used it.   Kamala was a name I'd found in my World Literature class.  It is the Indian name for the lotus blossom.  I liked Lilly and Ivy, but the one name I knew I could never use, but still thought was really cool, was Shakuntala.  I also found it in my literature class, but it wasn't a flower and I knew my husband would never go for it.  Still, it was a good name to remember.  When offered the choice between Shakuntala and any other name, I figured he would be happy to choose the name I really wanted.