SHOSHAN (שׁוֹשָׁן).  Unisex.  Hebrew name meaning "a lily."  Shushan, and Shoshana are feminine forms.

SHOSHAN.  Lily (שׁוּשַׁן, shushan', from its whiteness, 1 Kings vii, 19; also שׁוֹשָׁן, shoshan', 1 Kings vii, 22, 26; Cant. ii, 16; iv, 5; v, 13; vi, 2, 3; vii, 2; and שׁוֹשַׁנָּה, shoshannah', 2 Chron. iv, 5; Cant. ii, 1, 2; Hos. xiv, 5; Sept. and N.T. κρινον, Matt. vi, 28; Luke xii, 27).  "There are, no doubt, several plants indigenous in Syria which might come under the denomination of lily, when that name is used in a general sense, as it often is by travellers and others.  The term shoshan or sosun seems also to have been employed in this sense.  It was known to the Greeks (σοῦσον), for Dioscorides (ii, 116) describes the mode of preparing an ointment called susinon, which others, he says, call κρινινόν, that is, lilinum.  So Athenæus (xii, 513) indentifies the Persian suson with the Greek krinon.  The Arabic authors also use the word in a general sense, several varieties being described under the head sosun.  The name is applied even to kinds of Iris, of which several species, with various colored flowers, are distinguished.  But it appears to us that none but a plant which was well known and highly esteemed would be found occurring in so many different passages.  Thus, in 1 Kings vii. 19-26, and 2 Chron. iv, 5, it is mentioned as forming the ornamental work of the pillars and of the brazen sea, made of molten brass, for the house of Solomon, by Hiram of Tyre.  In Canticles the word is frequently mentioned; and it is curious that in five passages, Cant. ii, 2 and 16; iv. 5; vi, 2 and 3, there is a reference to feeding among lilies, which appears unaccountable when we consider that the allusion is made simply to an ornamental or sweet-smelling plant; and this the shushan appears to have been from the other passages in which it is mentioned.  Thus, in Cant. ii, 1, "I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys;" verse 2, "as the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters;" v, 13, "his lips like lilies, dropping sweet-smelling myrrh;" vii, 2, "thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies."  If we consider that the book of Canticles is supposed to have been written on the occasion of the marriage of Solomon with a princess of Egypt, it is natural to suppose that some of the imagery may have been derived from her native country, and that the above lily may be a plant of Egypt rather than of Palestine.  Especially does the water-lily, or lotus of the Nile, seem suitable to most of the above passages.  Thus Herodotus (ii, 92) says, "When the waters have risen to their extremest height, and all the fields are overflowed, there appears above the surface an immense quantity of plants of the lily species, which the Egyptians call the lotus; having cut down these, they dry them in the sun.  The seed of the flowers, which resembles that of the poppy, they bake, and make into a kind of bread; they also eat the root of this plant, which is round, of an agreeable flavor, and about the size of an apple.  There is a second species of the lotus, which grows in the Nile, and which is not unlike a rose.  The fruit, which grows from the bottom of the root, resembles a wasp's nest; it is found to contain a number of kernels of the size of an olive-stone, which are very grateful either fresh or dried."  All this exists even to the present day... (Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, v.5, 1891).