Lilly

Lilly grows from the Latin lilium, the Roman word for the lily. The flower came first. The name followed it. English speakers took to the spelling Lilly, doubling the l where the plant kept a single one.

The lily carried no idea of purity in Rome, where it was a common garden plant, grown for its white bloom and scent. That sense arrived later, through Christian painters who set a white lily beside the Virgin Mary. So the short meaning, lily flower and purity, joins a botanical fact to a symbol the Middle Ages added.

In a Polish class register, Lilly sits among names with older claims on the name-day calendar. It arrives without diminutives or variants, just the name and the flower under it. The name stays close to lilium, the single Latin word behind it.