Tina Knowles is getting candid about her daughter Solange’s conception.
“Solange was conceived on the Nile in Egypt,” Beyoncé and Solange’s mom said on the May 23 episode of Vogue’s “The Run-Through” podcast. “I thought I was having a boy and I wanted to name him Niles. But little did I know, here came this girl.”
Tina, 70, made the revelation as she explained the origins of her famous daughters’ names. Solange, she says, has French roots.
“I went to Paris. I bought a baby name book in Paris for my girlfriend, and she was gonna have a baby,” said Tina. “And then the next year, I would end up having a baby, so I pulled that old book out.”
Solange, 37, herself has spoken about where she was conceived in the past, explaining that it inspired the title of her Orion’s Rise tour.
“I had some revelations, in terms of my parents finding out they conceived me in Egypt after visiting the Giza pyramids, and connecting to that and the constellation of Orion that aligns with Giza,” she told the U.K.’s Evening Standard in October 2017.
As for Solange’s older sister, Beyoncé, devoted members of the Bey Hive will know that her name is inspired by Tina’s maiden name. Tina was born Celestine Ann Beyonce and changed her name in 1980 when she married Beyoncé and Solange’s father, Mathew Knowles.
“When I was gonna have a baby… We have very few boys and so I was like, ‘Oh God, this name is gonna become extinct,’” she explained. “So for me to claim it is really good.”
As well as sharing details of Solange’s conception, Tina recently looked back on what her daughters were like before they became famous.
“[Beyoncé] was very shy, and she got bullied a bit. But the day that she stood up for someone — she didn’t stand up for herself she stood up for them,” Tina said in a video for Vogue, which she shared on Instagram. “I’m getting emotional talking about it. I was just, I couldn’t have been more proud of her.”
Solange, meanwhile, had people “signing a petition in school” while only in fifth grade. “She’s always been an activist,” Tina fondly recalled.
