From the lotus flower, a symbol of purity and rebirth in many cultures; Greek 'lotos.'
Lotus comes directly from the name of the flower, and its roots stretch back through Greek lotos and into a tangle of ancient botanical and mythic associations. In the classical world, the exact plant behind the word was not always the same as the modern lotus, but the name became attached to beauty, water, fragrance, and dreamlike states. In Homer's Odyssey, the lotus-eaters consume a plant that brings forgetfulness and detachment, giving the word an early literary association with enchantment and escape.
Yet in many cultures, especially across South and East Asia, the lotus carries a very different and more exalted symbolic life. In Hinduism and Buddhism, the lotus is a sacred emblem of purity, spiritual awakening, and beauty rising unstained from muddy water. Deities are pictured seated upon lotus thrones; Buddhist imagery uses the opening lotus as a sign of enlightenment.
As a personal name in English, Lotus has been uncommon but not unknown, appearing occasionally in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially when floral and virtue names were fashionable. Its perception today blends delicacy with symbolic depth. Unlike Rose or Lily, Lotus feels more unusual and more explicitly contemplative.
It may evoke religion, meditation, Asian art, or the dreamy aesthetic of Symbolist poetry; it may also carry a faint exoticizing aura in Western usage because the flower has so often been treated as a sign of distant wisdom. As a name, Lotus feels serene but not passive, rare but intelligible, and rich with the old human fascination for beauty that emerges from difficulty.