Neomia

History & Origin

Neomia is an ornamented form of Naomi, the biblical name from the Hebrew for 'pleasantness' or 'sweetness'. Adding an -ia ending to a familiar name was a favorite way of dressing it up in the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century South; Neomia keeps Naomi's gentle meaning in a longer, more flowing shape.

It was always rare — a few dozen girls a year at its faint peak in the early nineteen-thirties — and it faded across the century as families returned to the plain Naomi. It reads as a vintage elaboration; while Naomi has enjoyed a strong modern revival, the ornate Neomia has stayed obscure.