Dahlia

Named for the flower, which Spanish botanists in Mexico designated in honor of eighteenth-century Swedish botanist Anders Dahl. English speakers adopted the plant in the late nineteenth century and the name slowly followed into American birth records by 1890. It spent over a century as a quiet outlier before joining the recent floral revival.

The name reads as modern garden revival with a slight gothic edge. It carries none of the midcentury playground associations of Daisy or the turn-of-the-century heaviness of Gertrude. With an average age around fourteen, most people carrying it are currently in school. It suggests parents who liked Lily but wanted more syllables.