From Old English 'leofman' meaning dear man or beloved person; also an Irish surname variant.
Lemon is a name with a surprisingly global etymology. The word traveled into English from Old French limon, which came from Arabic laymūn or laymun, which itself derived from Persian līmūn — a chain of trade-route borrowings that traces the citrus fruit's westward journey from South Asia to the Mediterranean. The lemon tree originated in what is now northeastern India, and its fruit was unknown in Europe until the Arab world introduced it via North Africa and Spain around the tenth century.
Every time someone says the word lemon they are unwittingly speaking a fragment of the medieval Silk Road. As a given name, Lemon has been used primarily as a surname — borne most famously by the jazz musician Brian Benson Lemon — but it has appeared sporadically as a first name across several cultures. In English it belongs to the wave of nature-adjacent word names that has gathered force since the early 2000s, sitting alongside Clover, Saffron, Olive, and Juniper in the edible-botanical corner of the naming universe.
The name's associations are bright and vivid: sharp clarity, summer tartness, Mediterranean warmth, the color of Van Gogh's sunflowers. It is unambiguously cheerful. Lemon also carries cultural cameos through literature and music.
Toni Morrison's novel "Sula" features a character nicknamed Chicken Little, but it is in the broader tradition of Southern American nicknames — where food names like Peaches, Sugar, and Honey have long been terms of deepest affection — that Lemon finds its warmest natural home. As a given name it reads as deliberately unconventional, a parents' signal that they intend to raise a child who stands apart from the crowd.