Heather

Most names can go into some category or another, or several categories in some cases. Examples include gem names like Ruby and Jasper, saint names, names that were surnames, and so on. One of those categories is flowers, or plants, and Heather is one of these names. Heather is a plant often associated with Scotland, and the heather page at Electric Scotland has some nice pictures of it, a great legend, and excellent information about the evolution of the word heather from Old Scottish to the present form. Actually that page probably contains more information about heather than anyone could ever need, but go there anyway for the legend and the pictures. It's very nice. The most famous Heather on the Internet is blogger Heather Armstrong, a.k.a. Dooce. And of course there's Heather Locklear, but Dooce is much more interesting. Really. Heather only started to be used regularly as a given name for baby girls in the 1930's, but had made it all the way to the top 10 in the 1970's. Its popularity has waned steadily since the 70's, but it is still in the top 300, so is certainly not out of use. The loss of popularity is almost certainly due to over-use (see the 1989 movie Heathers , with its clique of Heathers.)