Iris

The flower iris, of the genus Iris in the family Iridaceae, takes its name from the goddess because of the rainbow of colors in which its blossoms appear.

The flower has its own ancient symbolism: in Egyptian tomb frescoes it represented royalty and rebirth, in French heraldry the stylized iris became the fleur-de-lis, the emblem of the French monarchy from the 12th century onward.

The Greeks planted irises on the graves of women in the belief that the goddess would guide their souls to the afterlife. The colored part of the human eye also takes its name from the same Greek source.

Literary uses of Iris are abundant. Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), the Anglo-Irish novelist and philosopher, won the Booker Prize for The Sea, the Sea in 1978 and was the subject of the 2001 film Iris starring Judi Dench and Kate Winslet.

Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse features Iris as a minor character, and the title character of Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin (2000) is named Iris.

The 1986 Goo Goo Dolls song Iris, from the soundtrack of City of Angels, brought the name into popular music.

In the United States, Iris ranked within the top 200 from 1880 through 1934, peaking at rank 138 in 1900. It declined through mid-century but never fell out of the top 1000, an unusual continuity.

The name began rising in 2010 and crossed into the top 200 by 2017. By 2023 it had reached approximately rank 95. Iris is consistently popular in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, where it has held top 100 status for decades.

Notable bearers include American activist Iris Apfel, the centenarian fashion icon, and Greek-Cypriot mathematician Iris Runge.

The name’s mythological depth, floral beauty, and short crisp sound make it one of the most enduring nature-and-mythology names in the Western tradition.