According to The Hostapedia by Mark Zilis (2009), "The name 'Rudolph' stands for Thelma Rudolph...In the 1970s, Thelma grew several seedlings originated by Dr. Shuichi Hirao of Japan. Two of them proved to be special. They were passed around from garden to garden under a wide variety of names including 'Rudolph'. In the early 1990s, I named those two plants 'Hirao Majesty' and 'Hirao Supreme'. Unfortunately, the name 'Rudolph' and a few others have persisted in collections."