20 Surprising Stories Behind Celebrity Baby Names — Ranging From Sweet To Really, Really Wild
Maybe this is a weird writer thing, but I LOVE a deep dive into a name.
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There's a good reason why people tinker with their names to make them their own, be it a nickname or a full-on name change. It's one of the most personal things about you, and all anyone wants is their name to accurately reflect who they are on the inside.
Ndubisi Okoye / Via giphy.com
I went down an etymology rabbit hole, celebrity style, learning all about why celebrities give their kids the unique monikers they choose. Here's what I found!
1.Elon Musk and Grimes' son, X Æ A-12, turns three this spring. Here's what the little one's name means, according to mom themself.
•X, the unknown variable ⚔️•Æ, my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence)•A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent 🤍+ (A=Archangel, my favorite song) (⚔️🐁 metal rat)
2.Blue Ivy's name caught a lot of attention for it's layered meaning.
We know that blue is a significant color for Jay-Z and four (styled IV in Roman numerals) is a significant number to both Beyoncé and Jay Z — who celebrate their birthdays on the 4th of September and December, respectively, and their anniversary on April 4, 2008.
What you may not have known was that following Blue's birth, Beyoncé shared an excerpt from Rebecca SoInit's 2005 novel A Field Guide to Getting Lost on her Tumblr.
"The world is blue at its edges and in its depths… the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance," the passage reads."This light does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue."
3.Joking that she and Colin Jost "threw a bunch of letters together" to come up with their son Cosmo's name, Scarlett Johansson revealed that aside from it being unique, it shares a special theme with daughter Rose's name.
"They are both flowers," Johansson continued. "Not a lot of people make that connection. Cosmo is, like, a really sweet little flower that comes in different shades of, like, orange and yellow. That's why my daughter liked it, too."
4.Apple Martin is one of the OGs of unusual celebrity baby names, but Gwyneth Paltrow came up with the moniker in a pretty typical way.
"When we were first pregnant, her daddy said, 'If it's a girl I think her name should be Apple,'" Gwyneth told Oprah Winfrey in 2004. "It sounded so sweet, and it conjured such a lovely picture for me, you know. Apples are so sweet and they're wholesome, and it's biblical."
5.North West's name broke the internet when she was born and as a source told E! News, the name was all about celebrating the high point in Kim and Kanye's relationship at that time.
"North is the most high. There is nothing higher than North," the source told the network. "And, when it comes to the stars, the sun rises in the East and sets in the West."
More recently, Kardashian talked about her kids' unique name after welcoming son Psalm.
6.Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik's daughter, Khai, carries an important family name.
Khai refers to Gigi's beloved late grandma, Khairia, who passed away in 2008. Khairia's name is also referenced in Bella Hadid's middle name, Khair.
7.Cardi B let Offset take the reigns when it came to naming their daughter Kulture.
“I really like the name. It’s like almost tricky, but when it comes out, it’s like ‘Ah!’” Cardi told Ellen DeGeneres after welcoming their daughter Kulture.
8.True Thompson's name also has a surprising family tie.
Khloé Kardashian admitted it was "really so tough" coming up with a name for her and Tristan Thompson's baby girl on her website after welcoming True in 2019.
"I knew I wanted my baby to have a 'T' initial, so one night while we were all at dinner, thinking of some names, my grandma MJ suggested True," Khloé wrote.
"She told me it was my great-grandfather's first name and my grandfather's middle name. It stuck with me for my entire pregnancy and was the only one I couldn't get out of my head."
9.Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz had fun naming their son Bronx Mowgli.
Speaking with Ryan Seacrest, Wentz explained his son's middle name, "The Jungle Book was something that me and Ashlee bonded over. It's a cool name."
He also said he was enjoying the reaction to the first name Bronx.
"We've been throwing [ideas] back and forth a while," he commented. "It's kind of cool to just leave the narrative what it is."
10.Vin Diesel named his daughter Pauline in memory of his late friend Paul Walker.
"It felt like, you know, a way to keep his memory a part of my family and a part of my world," he explained to TODAY.
11.Courteney Cox wanted to name her little girl after herself when then-husband, David Arquette, suggested the abbreviated version, Coco.
"It's sort of an abbreviation of 'COurtney COx'," she told George Lopez in 2010.
12.Robert Downey Jr. and his wife, Susan, packed a lot of meaning into their daughter Avri Roel's name.
Avri Roel's name is a mish-mosh of grandparental inspiration, with the first two letters of her middle name, “Ro” coming from Robert's parents, Robert and Rosemary, as well as Susan's mom, Rosie. "El" represents RDJ's mom, Elsie, and Susan's dad, Eliot.
13.Busy Phillipps said that to her and her ex, Marc Silverstein, naming their two children Cricket and Birdie made sense.
“Since I grew up with a nickname — Busy being short for Elizabeth — when my husband and I started to have our babies, we decided that if wanted to call our kids something, we would just name them that thing that we wanted to call them," she told TODAY back in 2014.“I like the names,” Philipps said. “I think they’re cute.”
14.Iggy Azalea's son Onyx shares a special connection with her own birth name, Amethyst, as two types of quartz.
"I want to keep his life private but wanted to make it clear he is not a secret and I love him beyond words," she shared.
15.Holly Madison looked back to her childhood for unique name inspiration.
"I wanted to give my daughter a unique name,” the former Playmate tells E!. “Growing up, there was a girl in my school named Rainbow and I was so envious of that name. I thought it was so pretty and unique!”
16.On a UK talk show, Ed Sheeran happily defended his daughter's name, Lyra Antarctica.
"I realize some people think it's quite a strange name," the now-father of two admitted at the time. "But my wife's called Cherry, and she is the only Cherry that I've ever met and I think that she's the only Cherry that she's ever met and I quite like that. In my class at school, there were probably more Eds."
17.Reggie Bush reached into mythology for daughter Briseis' name.
After first hearing the name in the movie Troy, Bush and his then-partner decided they liked it for a little girl.
18.Matthew Morrison and his wife, Renee Puente, thought about what they wanted for their family.
They knew they wanted to revel in their first child, inspiring the name, Revel James.
19.Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes picked Suri's name based on its Hebrew meaning, "princess," and its Persian meaning, "red rose."
The name never took off after people discovered it translated differently in other languages and cultures.
20.Shay Mitchell stole her daughter's name, Atlas Noa, from a friend.
“Good friends of ours had just recently had a daughter themselves, and so they were calling us like, ‘Hey, what you guys think about these names?’ They went through a list,” Mitchell admitted to She Knows. “And as soon as I heard her say Atlas I was like, ping! I looked at [partner Matte Babel]. He was like, ping! I’m like, this is perfect. And I’m like, ‘You should go with the other one!’"
"And then she ended up going with a different name, which is actually perfectly suited for her daughter, and we took the name Atlas.”
As for Noa, it "was something that I actually randomly saw on Twitter.”
