Bear Rocknroll, the name of the newborn son of Kate Winslet and Ned Rocknroll, provides a dramatic finish to a year of celebrity baby names that brought us a girl named Lincoln, a boy named Phaedra, and Kimye’s infamous North West.
The newest little Bear is, stunningly, not the first celebrity baby named Bear: That honor goes to Alicia Silverstone’s son Bear Blu, born in 2011.
Animal names are today’s hottest nature names, with Bear leading a pack that includes Fox, Wren (one of the trendiest middle names for girls), Wolf, Hawk, Pike, Falcon, Lionel, and Talon. And in a cross-species trend, Bear is the only non-human name on 2013’s list of top ten dog names, topped by Bella and Max.
Other names that relate to bears in more subtle ways are also fashionable right now. These include Winnie, as in The Pooh, the name of Jimmy Fallon’s newborn daughter; and Orson, Arthur, Benno, and Oberon, which all mean bear.
Other celebrity offspring with animal names include adventurous namer Erykah Badu’s daughter Puma, Busy Philipps’s little girls Cricket and Birdie, and Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen’s now-grown son Wolf. Bryan Adams’s little girl is named the adorable Mirabella Bunny.
Besides Bear Rocknroll, this year’s crop of crazy celebrity baby names includes:
Everest Hobson – Director George Lucas and wife Mellody Hobson gave this elevated name to their new daughter.
Phaedra Bloom Forever – Mom Peaches Honeyblossom Geldoff comes by her taste for adventurous names naturally; what makes this one even more special is that she gave it to her son.
Lincoln Bell – Inspired as much by the movie as the president, Lincoln is a hot hero name. Actors Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard changed things up when they used it for their daughter.
Hero Peregrine – Actress Cree Summer gave this name to her daughter, who joined sister Brave Littlewing.
Maceo Robert – Halle Berry and Olivier Martinez revived this old Spanish form of Matthew for their newborn son.
Maven Sonae – Comedian Tracy Morgan chose this word name for his new daughter.
McCartney Charles – Son of American Idol finalist Chris Sligh, who continued the Beatles theme he started when he gave his daughter the middle name Lennon.
Isis Sidney – TV cupcake maven Katherine Kallinis Berman gave her daughter this name of the Egyptian goddess of the moon and sky, motherhood and fertility.
Valor – Actor Emile Hirsch chose this upstanding name for his son.
And of course…
North West – The jokey name of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s infant daughter still tops Bear as the Craziest Celebrity Baby Name of 2013. Lucky for her, she’s called the less-crazy Nori.