Iris

The Greek goddess of the rainbow, messenger between Olympus and earth, who left stripes of color across the sky behind her flight. The flower that bears her name unfurls in April in shades from pale lavender to deep indigo; Van Gogh painted them in Saint-Rémy the year before he died, a canvas now owned by the Getty. Iris is also the colored part of the eye, from the same Greek root. Iris Murdoch wrote twenty-six novels with that name on the cover. The name currently ranks 71 and is given to about one in 516 girls. Two crisp syllables, six mythological petals.