Used in English from the place-name Tallulah, later adopted as a given name.
Talulah — more commonly spelled Tallulah — is a name of Choctaw origin, drawn from the southeastern Native American language and traditionally interpreted as meaning "leaping water" or "running water," evoking the sound and movement of rapids or a waterfall. The name is associated with Tallulah Falls in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia, a place of dramatic natural beauty that attracted tourists and artists throughout the 19th century. Its indigenous roots give it a distinctly American character, part of a tradition of Native place names that were adopted first as location names and then, over generations, as personal names.
The name's most flamboyant historical bearer is Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968), the Alabama-born actress whose outrageous wit, theatrical magnetism, and deliberately provocative persona made her one of the great personalities of Broadway and Hollywood's golden age. Bankhead herself was named for her grandmother, who was named for the Georgia waterfall, creating a lineage of the name that connects indigenous geography, Southern aristocracy, and theatrical legend. Her name became synonymous with a certain kind of spectacular, untameable femininity — she once said, famously, that she was "as pure as the driven slush."
The name has never been common, which has always been part of its appeal. In more recent decades, Talulah/Tallulah has been favored by creative and celebrity parents — notably Demi Moore and Bruce Willis named a daughter Tallulah Belle — and it has acquired associations with bohemian confidence and artistic households. The variant spelling Talulah softens the name visually, making it slightly less imposing on paper while preserving the same auditory rush. It remains a name with a personality built in: earthy, exuberant, and impossible to ignore.