Flora

Flora was the Roman goddess of flowers and spring, honored each April at the Floralia with garlands, games, and a cheerful disregard for decorum. Botticelli painted her into Primavera, Ovid wrote her biography, and the Victorians revived her name with such enthusiasm that by 1890 Flora sat squarely in the English top hundred. It has softened in recent decades but never gone away. Two clean syllables, FLOR-ah. The name is all open vowel and garden air, light without being insubstantial. It suits daughters who press leaves between book pages, remember the names of wildflowers, and grow up to be loved by dogs and difficult aunts.