Amoreena

Amoreena is a name really created in song. Elton John and his long time collaborator lyricist Bernie Taupin wrote a little ditty called “Amoreena” which was released in 1970 on the “Tumbleweed Connection” album (Amoreena also happened to be the name of Elton John’s god-daughter). The song was also memorable as the only musical piece used in the 1975 critically acclaimed cult-classic film “Dog Day Afternoon” starring Al Pacino. “Amoreena” is a country inspired rock ballad about a man nostalgically recalling his old love and “days gone by”. The young Amoreena of the song is described as a “lusty flower” – a girl who would go “running through the grass for hours / Rolling through the hay like a puppy child”. The song inspires a sense of youthfulness and free-spiritedness, but it is also a song of yearning: “Oh I miss you Amoreena like a king bee misses honey.” The name Amoreena may have been coined from the flowering plant named “amaranth” which comes from the Greek “amarantos” meaning "unfading, unwithering" in reference to the plant’s ability to hold its color without fading and structure without withering (hence its ancient Greek association with immortality). This possible root or folk etymology to the name Amoreena is apropos since the song is about a young girl whose memory remains immortal in the mind of her old love.