Tina Knowles Shares That Her Daughter Solange Was Conceived on the Nile River in Egypt

Both of Tina Knowles’ daughters, Beyoncé and Solange, have unique names—and Tina Knowles shared on a recent episode of Vogue’s podcast “The Run-Through” the origin stories of both of them.

Let’s start with Solange: to know where her name ultimately came from, we have to take a look at what her name might have been had she been a boy. Knowles revealed that, had she had a son, she would have named him Niles, because Solange was conceived on the Nile River in Egypt.

“I thought I was having a boy, and I wanted to name him Niles,” Knowles said. “But little did I know, here came this girl.” Knowles then shared that she found Solange’s name in a baby book she bought in Paris, one she had purchased for one of her girlfriends. “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,” Knowles said.

Solange herself spoke of her conception story during an interview in 2017 with The Evening Standard, telling the publication “I had some revelations in terms of my parents finding out they conceived me in Egypt about visiting the Giza pyramids, and [I connected] to that and the constellation of Orion that aligns with Giza,” Solange said. (Per Page Six, Solange’s tour in 2017 was called Orion’s Rise.) As an homage—intentional or not—to what could have been her name, Solange collaborated with Kendrick Lamar on a song called “Nile,” which was featured on 2019’s The Lion King: The Gift soundtrack.

As for Beyoncé, her name is her mother Tina’s maiden name, which evolved from both “Boyoncé” and “Beyincé,” Knowles said on “The Run-Through,” adding she felt it was very important to keep her family name alive because there were “very few” boys in their family to carry it on. (Quite certain the world will never forget your maiden name, Ms. Tina.)

“We have very few boys and so I was like, ‘Oh God, this name is going to become extinct,’” Knowles said. “So for me to claim it is really good.”

She spoke of both of her daughters—whom she shares with her ex-husband Mathew Knowles—when they were children, reminiscing of her eldest, Beyoncé, that she “was very shy, and she got bullied a bit,” Knowles said. “But the day that she stood up for someone—she didn’t stand up for herself, she stood up for them. I’m getting emotional talking about it. I was just—I couldn’t have been more proud of her.”

As for Solange, her youngest had people “signing a petition in school” when she was just in the fifth grade. “She’s always been an activist,” Knowles said proudly.