Criminally handsome Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo has revealed the name of his month-old son ... Cristiano. On July 3, Ronaldo took to social media to announce the birth of the nine-pound, eight-ounce bundle of joy, posting on Facebook and Twitter: “It is with great joy and emotion that I inform I have recently become father to a baby boy. As agreed with the baby's mother, who prefers to have her identity kept confidential, my son will be under my exclusive guardianship. No further information will be provided on this subject and I request everyone to fully respect my right to privacy (and that of the child) at least on issues as personal as these are.” While Ronaldo and his girlfriend, Russian model Irina Shayk, sojourn in New York, Cristiano, Jr., is being looked after by Ronaldo’s mother Dolores and sister Kátia Aveira, who says that the child “looks like his father and like me. He has the same eyes.” But can he kick?
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How does he keep them all straight? Boxing champ George Foreman didn't just name a grill after himself, but all five of his sons as well—George Jr., George III, George IV, George V, and George VI. The repetition was apparently born of out necessity: Foreman told one interviewer, “I named all my sons George Edward Foreman. And I tell people, ‘If you’re going to get hit as many times as I’ve been hit by Mohammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Evander Holyfield—you’re not going to remember many names.’” Foreman has 11 kids total, five boys and six girls, one whom he named Georgetta and another he named Freda George. “I was really close to naming all the girls George as well,” he wrote on his website, “but I decided that might have been overkill.” You’ve already k.o.’d that point, George.
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Zowie Bowie's (neé Duncan Zowie Hayward Jones) rhyming name is a variation on the Greek girl’s name Zoe, and was chosen by his mother, Angie. As the rock star’s son embarked upon a career in film direction, he opted to go by Duncan Jones, wanting to make it on his own. “I think if I was a director called ‘Zowie Bowie’ the name alone brings so much baggage it immediately allows people to feel, ‘Oh, he’s just got where he is by using his name,” he said.
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The Cougartown star’s daughter’s name is not an homage to Chanel, but the result of compromise with her husband David Arquette. “Courteney comes from the South and her mother’s name’s Courteney Cox, and she’s Courteney Cox, and she wanted to name our kid Courteney Cox, but I’m half-Jewish,” said Arquette. “My mother was Jewish, so it’s sort of against the Jewish tradition to [name a child] after somebody who’s living.” Instead they took the first two letters of Courteney’s first and last names and came up with Coco.
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Will Smith and Jada Pinkett made sure each of their kids had a piece of Mom or Dad: Will, a Junior himself, passed along the family name to his first son (with ex-wife Sheree Zampino), Willard Christopher Smith, III, known as Trey, in 1992. In 1998, Pinkett gave birth to their first child together, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, mixing both parents’ names. They had a daughter two years later, Willow Camille Reign Smith, who not only takes after her father in name, but in character: the wee one loves the spotlight. The acting bug bit Willow early, as she made her screen debut in I Am Legend at the age of 7. According to her dad, “Willow is Paris Hilton...Willow wants to be on TV.” Smith told People magazine, “You don’t work with Willow...You work for Willow.”
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Professional volleyball player Gabrielle Reece spiked her last name to her firstborn, Reece Viola (she goes by Viola), 6, whose father is Laird Hamilton, the big-wave surfer. The couple, married since 1997, has another daughter, two-and-a-half-year-old Brody Joe, plus Hamilton’s 15-year-old daughter Izabella, from a previous marriage. Reece admits that it can be a handful raising three kids, but she manages to keep her busy mom-athlete schedule in order. “I don’t want to pretend I’m perfect, my kids are perfect, my husband is perfect, or my marriage is perfect,” she told CelebrityBabyScoop.com. “I just want to strive to make my life the best it can be.”
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Roland Burris, the Illinois senator appointed under controversial circumstances involving former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and his wife, Berlean, must have liked the sonorous qualities of his first name. Ro-land. Let’s say it again. Ro-land. Either that, or Burris has a serious ego: his son is Roland II, and his daughter, Rolanda. Burris has already erected an enormous gravesite, where he will no doubt set his name in stone forever. Apparently that’s not enough “Roland” to satisfy the Burrises: the senator told crowds that he fought mightily for his seat for the sake of his grandson, Roland T. Burris, then 4 years old.
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Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, was known for his oddities almost as much as for his success. Perhaps some of his stranger tastes were in kids’ names: Prince Michael, Paris, and Prince Michael II (a.k.a. Blanket) are his children. Wendy Douglas, executive producer of Hidden Lives of Michael Jackson’s Children (a documentary that aired on TLC in June), told the New York Post that Jackson’s children agree he “was a little weird, but was also a very hands-on father.” Jackson's parenting skills, however, sometimes caused controversy. Since his death in 2009, Jackson’s children, now 13, 12, and 8 years old, are beginning to emerge from previously sheltered lives. And who knows? Maybe one of the Princes will someday take the crown.
Funny names might run in the family: Jermaine Jackson, like his younger brother, took to naming most of his kids after himself, in imaginative variations. The former Jackson 5 bassist has eight children with four women, three of whom he was married to. His first wife, Hazel Gordy, gave birth to Jermaine Jr. (1977), Autumn (1978), and Jaimy (1987). Then there was Dawn (1984), born to an unknown mother, followed by Jeremy (1986) and Jourdynn (1989), his children with longtime girlfriend Margaret Maldonado. Jafaar (1996) and Jermajesty (2000) were born from his controversial second wife, Alejandra Oaziaza, the ex-wife of his younger brother Randy. And the kids keep coming. In 2004, Jackson married Halima Rashid, an Afghan woman, with whom he recently announced he is having twin girls, to be named Mecca and Madina. Islam, Jermaine said in the same interview, could have saved his brother.
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