From the English word for a blossom, symbolizing beauty, growth, and nature.
Flower as a given name sits at the intersection of nature naming, Puritan virtue traditions, and whimsical literary culture. The word itself descends from Old French "flor" and Latin "flos," cognate with the name Flora — the Roman goddess of spring and blossoming plants who presided over the Floralia festival in April and May. While Flora became the formal Latin-derived given name, Flower as a direct English word-name was used from at least the seventeenth century, when both Puritan and Romani communities in England bestowed it on daughters as an expression of natural beauty and divine creation.
The name's most famous modern association is almost certainly the timid striped skunk in Walt Disney's 1942 film Bambi — a character whose gentle, sweet nature made the name feel tender and a little whimsical in the popular imagination. This Disney association colors how many Anglophone listeners receive the name, which can work both for and against it depending on the parent's intent. Less sentimentally, the Romani community has long used Flower as a given name with genuine affection and cultural continuity, part of a rich tradition of nature and word names including Amber, Pearl, Crystal, and Blossom.
In the contemporary world, Flower occupies the same bouquet as word-names like Blossom, Violet, and Primrose — names that have been rescued from Victorian-nursery associations by a wave of botanical and nature naming enthusiasm. Unlike Violet or Rose, Flower has not yet completed the full arc back to mainstream fashionability, giving it a quality that is simultaneously old-fashioned and genuinely unusual. Parents who choose it today are making a clear aesthetic statement — poetic, uncomplicated, and unapologetically romantic.