The meaning of my name is simply a type of flower. Or more correctly the English name derived originally from Latin as so many words are. It should mean beauty but really it is rather plain. Yet another flower name that over the years people have deemed acceptable enough to bestow on their daughters. Hoping to instill within their daughters grace, beauty, pose, and vibrancy; attributes of the particular flower they favored greatly. It's sadness in my father's eyes when he recollects the horrid memories of his youth.
It was my grandmother's name and now in the tradition of my family it is my name. She was strongly stubborn and hard to convince a trait we both share. My grandfather asked her out on dates for years before she finally relented and told him yes. Regardless of the negative slant people view stubbornness in, I actually think that it can be positive. Being stubborn just shows how you know exactly what you want. Then again my grandfather was rather stubborn himself to have asked her out for so long, despite all of her rejections.
My grandmother. She was so young, full of promise, dreams, and aspirations. It did not last though; she died when my father was still a baby, herself fresh out of adolescence. When people reflect back on her now it is only in reference to my father. No one seems to recall her stubbornness, her dreams, how she embodied her namesake flower so completely. My father named me, as a way to pay homage to his long gone mother. I wonder why my own mother let him, didn't she have a name she desired to use. Lily. I may have inherited my grandmother's name but I will never be able to live up to her memory, especially in the eyes of my father.
Being named after my grandmother is not an uncommon occurrence in my family. Both of my brothers are named after either family members or important people in my parent's lives who impacted them in some way. Also some of my cousins are named after family members like how my cousin Fred is named after his father's dead twin brother. At times I think that maybe my family is slightly unoriginal in the names we chose; a name can never truly feel like your own when someone else has had it before you not long ago. My cousin Rose was given a flower name as well but her name sounds like a melody when it is spoken not plain like mine. She can even be called Rosie for short. I am forever Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily.
I wish at times that I could give myself a new name; a name more like the real me. Not the one that everyone thinks they know based off of my family. Instead of Lily, I would be Fiona, Gemma, or Imogen. Though maybe the name Lily is closer to my real self then I think. Maybe I characterize the flower, the lily as much as my namesake did.