It's bad enough to use any flower name on a boy...the only possible exception is
Hyacinth or
Narcissus where those are religious/mythological, and even those are gambles. But Lavender...omg, pretty on a girl, question-of-masculinity on a boy. A boy named
Lavender will get teased...it's like a boy named
Sue all over again. Now, people say a lot of my favorite boys names will get a boy teased, but at least with mine one knows they are masculine and they won't get teased for that.
As for a girl,
Lavender's great, except for when you talk about the HP character
Lavender Brown, who is the wizarding equivalent of one of the popular girls, and probably only wants snogging and sex from Ron...poor
Hermione!
Lavender's the best of these though. I also like
Angelina, but
Ashley's too common, I used to have a nasty field hockey coach named
Marina, and Maliyah isn't even the correct spelling; the correct spelling is Maleeha. It's pretty, and I used to go to school with a Pakistani girl by that name. A few years ago (kind of creepy), our history teacher decided to name his daughter that after her, but changed the spelling; his daughter's name was Maleeya
Jayne (
Jayne after his recently deceased mother).