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Why it would be: someone made it up. Niobe is a name from Greek mythology, but the story is not Greek, it's a legend from Asia minor, and all the names (except those of deities identified with familiar Greek gods) are names from Asia minor in languages other than Greek, such as Lycian or even older, as there were older cultures and religions in Asia Minor before the Lycian language came in from the across the Caucasus, and these religious practices and names were incorporated into Lycian, Luwian, new Hittite etc., and then Ionian Greek as these cultures entered the region. The Goddess Leto, her son Apollo, Niobe and her father Tantalus all have names from the prehistory of Anatolia (although not associated with Niobe, Hecate and Catherine are also Anatolian names adopted into Greek). Except in very unusual cases (some documents in these ancient languages exist, particularly old and new Hittite, and some words are also found in diplomatic letters in other languages of the region, such as Egyptian, Sumerian and Assyrian), no-one honestly knows what they mean.

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FYI, the real Greek word for fern is φτέρη (ptere), a distant cognate of "fern" and possibly "feather"

This message was edited 10/28/2018, 11:16 PM