Tallulah

Meaning of Tallulah

Tallulah drifts onto the tongue like a small river pooling beneath moon-white cliffs, her syllables tumbling in quiet cataracts—tuh-LOO-luh, a song said to spring from Choctaw roots that evoke “leaping water,” yet echoing, too, the ancient Gaelic Talulla, “princess of abundance.” She is the heroine of her own legend: somewhere between an emerald glen and a sun-struck delta, a child is born and the midwife hears the rush of water outside, naming the infant after its music; generations later, silver-screen star Tallulah Bankhead wraps the name in velvet glamour, and modern parents, entranced by that blend of wild river and vintage starlight, set it adrift once more upon the birth registers. Like a Roman fountain whose streams never tire, Tallulah has flowed steadily—quiet in the middle decades, then gathering force since the millennium, cresting in the 600s today—proof that even gentle waters can carve their mark. To choose Tallulah is to offer a daughter both fluency and freedom: the liquid lilt of each syllable invites laughter, yet its meaning whispers resilience, the way water softens stone. She belongs equally to lullabies and epics, as comfortable swirling through Spanish plazas at dusk as skimming the mossy rocks of an Appalachian creek, ever reminding those who speak her that life, like water, is most beautiful when it moves.