Tina Knowles recently got candid about her creativity behind naming both her children as well as her unconventional approach to conceiving.
The mum of two daughters appeared on Vogue’s The Run-Through podcast where she revealed her initial hope for a son when she was expecting another child five years after her firstborn.
“I thought I was having a boy and I wanted to name him Niles. But little did I know, here came this girl,” Knowles said in the May 23 episode.
She explained that the intention was merely to honour her memory where she conceived at the River Nile.
When she gave birth to another baby girl, Tina didn’t waste any time in finding a name. After putting in some research, Tina came up with Solange, a female name of French origin that means solemn.
Tina disclosed that the inspiration for Solange came from a baby book she bought in Paris.
“I bought a baby name book in Paris for my girlfriend and she was going to have a baby. And then the next year I wound up having a baby, so I pulled that old book out,” she explained.
The conception story is no secret from Solange, 37, who during a 2017 interview with the Evening Standard reflected on the conncetion between her birth and her parents’ visit to Egypt.
“I had some revelations in terms of my parents finding out they conceived me in Egypt after visiting the Giza pyramids and [I connected] to that and the constellation of Orion that aligns with Giza,” she told the outlet at the time.
Tina further revealed that Beyoncé’s name, too, originated from an inventive idea, revealing that the word is simply an Americanised version of her maiden name.
With few males in the family, Tina wished to carry on her maiden name Beyincé, evolving it to Boyoncé.