FLORA LEON

Name borne in Roman mythology by the goddess of flowers and the spring (a derivative of Latin flos ‘flower’, genitive floris). It is also the feminine form of the old Roman family name Florus, likewise derived from flos. Flora was little used in England before the 18th century, when it was imported from Scotland. In 1746 Flora Macdonald (1722–90) of Milton in South Uist helped Bonnie Prince Charlie to escape from there to the Island of Skye, disguised as a woman, after his defeat at Culloden. In fact, Flora was merely an Anglicized form of her Gaelic name, Fionnaghal, a variant of Fionnguala (see Fionnuala). However, her fame made the name Flora popular in the Highlands and elsewhere.

Spanish (León): habitational name from León, a city in northwestern Spain, named with Latin legio, genitive legionis ‘legion’, a division of the Roman army. In Roman times the city was the garrison of the 7th Legion, known as the Legio Gemina. The city's name became reduced from Legion(em) to Leon(em), and in this form developed an unetymological association with the word for ‘lion’, Spanish león.