Magnolia

Magnolia blooms the way the tree does, slow and opulent and unmistakable. The name honors the seventeenth-century French botanist Pierre Magnol, for whom the flowering genus was christened, and it has drifted through Southern literature and film for a century before parents began using it widely as a given name. It now sits at 138 on the American girls chart, one of the more lavish botanicals in the top 150. Four syllables unfold like petals, mag-NO-lee-ah, with the liquid L and that open closing vowel. Nicknames Maggie, Nola, and Lia keep it wearable. Creamy-white, slightly fragrant, Southern and sure.