Violet · Daily fortune

Violet is a feminine name of English origin, taken directly from the English word for the purple flower and ultimately from Latin viola. Behind the Name records that it was common in Scotland from the 16th century and came into general use as an English given name during the 19th century, as part of the Victorian fashion for flower names. Wikipedia notes that it dropped below position 1000 in the American rankings by 1960 and returned to the top 1000 in 1990; in 2025 it ranked #13 among American girls' names.

There is no puzzle here. Behind the Name derives Violet "from the English word violet for the purple flower, ultimately derived from Latin viola", and Wikipedia agrees that the name comes from the flower itself. The related Latin form Viola is glossed by Behind the Name simply as "violet". The name therefore means what the word means: parents choosing it are choosing the flower and its colour, not a buried compound with a separate sense.

Violet's history runs through Scotland first. Behind the Name records it as common in Scotland from the 16th century, well before it became a general English name during the 19th century. Wikipedia places that general adoption inside a broader fashion: flower names were commonly used from about 1880 through about 1910 in the United States, and Violet was the 88th most frequent girls' name in 1900. The fashion then collapsed, and so did the name — it dropped below position 1000 in the American rankings by 1960, which is as close to disappearing as a formerly top-100 name gets. It reappeared in the top 1000 at position 289 in 1990 and has climbed steadily since, helped, Wikipedia suggests, by the general fashionability of names containing the letter v. By 2022 it was the 20th most used name for newborn American girls and the 27th most popular girls' name in Canada; in the 2025 American data it stands at #13.

Violet ranked #13 for girls in the United States in 2025 (Social Security Administration). Wikipedia supplies the shape of the curve behind that number: 88th in 1900, below 1000 by 1960, back in at 289 in 1990, and 20th in 2022. A name that recovers from outside the top 1000 to the top 15 within about thirty-five years is unusual, and the current rank is higher than the name's Victorian peak.

English allows two pronunciations: Behind the Name gives both the two-syllable /ˈvaɪ.lɪt/ (VY-lit, identical to the flower) and the three-syllable /ˈvaɪ.ə.lɪt/ (VY-ə-lit). Most other languages use their own form of the name rather than the English spelling; the forms below are the ones Behind the Name lists, and their pronunciations were not verified in this pass.

Violet is the flower name with the most spine. Where Lily and Daisy are soft all the way through, Violet ends on a hard consonant and carries a colour as well as a plant, which gives it an antique, slightly severe edge — the register of Beatrice and Florence rather than of Willow and Meadow. It is simultaneously a great-grandmother name and a current top-15 name, which is precisely the combination parents have been reaching for over the last decade. The only short form Behind the Name records is Vi, which is brisk and a little mid-century.

Wikipedia's article lists hundreds of bearers; only those it names explicitly in the material consulted here are recorded, plus the fictional characters it singles out.

Names that share Violet's botanical source, its Victorian-revival register, or its sound.