Why did Uma Thurman choose Rosalind Arusha Arkadina Altalune Florence Thurman-Busson for her new daughter? Plus, the meaning behind Blue Ivy Carter, Harper Seven Beckham, Zuma Rossdale, and others.
Well one thing is certain: when Uma Thurman's daughter (with Arpad Busson) is ready for school, no one will have the same name. The actress finally revealed that they have named the 3-month-old "Rosalind Arusha Arkadina Altalune Florence Thurman-Busson" and her publicist told People: "Each name has a special reason and meaning to her mother and father.” So what could they possibly mean? "Rosalind" was, of course, the main character in Shakespeare's As You Like It. "Arusha" is a city in Tanzania. "Arkadina" is the surname of a character in Chekhov'sThe Seagull (in which Thurman's ex, Ethan Hawke once starred). As for the fourth name—Thurman says the girl will be called "Luna." Which she's probably over the moon about. Since that's what it means in Latin.
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Considering some of the bizarro names celebrities choose for their children, Blue Ivy Carter actually seems relatively normal. And according to several sources (and expert fan analysis) there appears to be real meaning behind B.I.C.’s ID. Starting with the middle name first, several fans suspect “Ivy” is actually a pun on “IV,” the Roman numeral four. Both Beyoncé and Jay-Z were born on the 4th (September and December, respectively), and the two were married on 4/4 in 2008. As for the name “Blue,” Jay-Z has three albums with "Blueprint" in the title, and Blue is a shortened version of that word—four letters long.
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Their three sons have colorful first names—Brooklyn, Romeo, and Cruz—but when Victoria and David Beckham had their first daughter in July 2011, they chose the quiet first name Harper and the curious middle name Seven. The L.A. Galaxy star explained the significance of the baby Posh Spice girl’s name on his website: “Harper is an English name which we loved and one of the other reasons was Victoria’s favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird and the author was Harper Lee.” As for Seven, Becks went on to say, “A lot of people have assumed its just because of my shirt number that I wore for many years and part of it is because I had so much luck around wearing that number, wearing it for England, wearing it for Manchester United. It was such an influential number throughout my career and a lucky number...but that wasn’t the main reason.”
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When Mariah Carey gave birth to twins in April 2011, she and husband Nick Cannon chose meaningful, if eccentric, names for their children. As she explained on her website, their son, Moroccan Scott, is named for the Moroccan-themed room in Mariah’s apartment where Cannon proposed. (Scott is also the America’s Got Talent host’s middle name and his grandmother’s maiden name.) Meanwhile, daughter Monroe is named after Marilyn Monroe, who has always been an inspiration to Mariah. Like Carey, she has no middle name.
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Penn Jillette has a perfectly reasonable answer for naming his daughter Moxie CrimeFighter. As he explained to Piers Morgan, her first name comes from the old-timey soda, Moxie, which has come to mean “guts and gumption.” Fair enough. But CrimeFighter? “It was my wife's idea, but I get the blame for it,” Jillette swears. “She said, ‘I don't have a middle name. Middle names are jive. I want nothing to do with it’ ... Then our piano player said, ‘You know, in your book [a novel that I wrote called Sock]. you have one of the characters say simply, “Call me crime fighter.” Why don’t you name her crime fighter?’” But Jillette thinks it will all pay off some day. “My thinking was, when she is 17 and pulled over by the police for whatever she does, she's able to pull out her driver's license and say, ‘My middle name is CrimeFighter. We're on the same team.’”
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Ron Howard may be one of America’s most wholesome celebrities, but his children have somewhat naughty middle names—they are each named for the place where they were conceived. Daughter Bryce Dallas Howard (who most recently starred in The Help) was conceived in, yes, Dallas while twins, Jocelyn and Paige, have the shared middle name Carlyle after the Carlyle Hotel in New York. The one exception is Howard’s son, Reed Cross, who takes his name from a street, because, as Howard joked, “Volvo isn't a very good middle name."
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Nicolas Cage chose his own stage name in honor of the Marvel superhero Luke Cage, so why not use a similar method for when he had a son in 2005? Little Kal-el Coppola Cage gets his first name from Superman’s birth name on Krypton, while the middle name is Nic’s actual surname—he is the nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola.
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“Chelsea has heard us tell stories about her childhood many times,” Hillary Clinton wrote in her autobiography, Living History. “She knows she was named after Joni Mitchell’s song, ‘Chelsea Morning,’ which Bill and I heard as we strolled around Chelsea in London, during the wonderful vacation we took over Christmas 1978. Bill said, ‘If we ever have a daughter, her name should be Chelsea.’” And two years later, they did.
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Both Nicole Richie and husband Benji Madden loved the named Harlow for a baby—but for different reasons. "I really like Jean Harlow the actress, and [Nicole] likes Shalom Harlow the model," Madden told People magazine. "Harlow's cool because it feels like a classic name. Winter [is] so serene and quiet, and that's how [our daughter] is."
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Just because a guy likes to take his shirt off a lot doesn’t mean he isn’t an avid Bible reader. So when it came time to name his son, Matthew McConaughey looked to the Good Book for inspiration. "Levi was another name for the apostle Matthew in the Bible. They were, in fact, two names for the same person,” he told OK magazine. "Our son was born at 6:22 p.m., and this particular time represents my favorite verse in the Book of Matthew in the Bible: 'If thy eye be single, thy whole body will be full of light.'" The boy’s middle name comes from his mother, Camilla Alves. "We wanted to incorporate her family name," McConaughey explained.
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The odds are pretty good that Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale’s son, Zuma Nesta Rock Rossdale, will be the only boy in his class with that name. But what does it actually mean? Zuma comes from Zuma Beach in Malibu, where his father had an epiphany that he wanted to be a rock star. Nesta is in honor of Bob Marley’s middle name. (Both parents are big fans of the reggae star, which explains why older brother Kingston is named after Kingston, Jamaica.) As for that third name, well, just consider the family business.
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