Said one celebrity to another, “Why shouldn’t I name my baby ‘Promiscuity’? “

I like to play a game, with myself or anyone I can convince to join me. Now, get your minds out of the gutter! It’s a game about baby names. Or rather, the baby names a celebrity might use.

Once you get started it’s hard not to see examples everywhere. You know the kind I mean. Names that are meant to sound unique and imply a certain idiosyncratic eccentricity in the parents; Apple, Blanket, Sunday… Presumably we’re meant to add baby naming to the list of ways we can never hope to compare to the celebrity; never understand what it’s like to be them, mere mortals that we are.

It’s not just celebrities, either. I used to work at a prestigious and exclusive winter resort, teaching 3-6 year olds with expensive and not often used season passes how to ski, and how to find the hot chocolate huts hidden around the mountain. Plenty had perfectly normal names, but there were a few that would have fit in well at the birthday party of young celebrity offspring  Ocean, or Pilot, or Blue Angel. My personal favourite had to be the 4-year-old blond ringletted ‘Chandelier,’ who went by the unfortunate shortening, ‘Chandy.’

Some of the unusual names favoured by celebrities and the celebrity-like can sound quite sweet, some are plain weird, some seem oddly inappropriate. To think of your own celebrity baby name you need to try to walk a line where people aren’t sure if you’ve hit on a beautiful &  unique or stupid & regrettable handle for your precious mite.

So, you know how to play. Imagine yourself as a celebrity. Your baby bump isn’t hidden well from the paparazzi .. your identity as the baby daddy has been revealed….. Now name that auspicious infant!

Here’s some of my recent entries for the title of best celebrity baby name, some that I can easily imagine being used, some that I sincerely hope never would be:

Crumpet

Pinafore

Valour

One

Ambrosia

Promiscuity

Verisimilitude

Aubergine

Silk

Cassette

Tamarillo

……. I really could go on and on! The next step is to describe the personalities and lives of the babies who carry these names. I imagine Crumpet is a deliciously plump little girl with close-cropped curls and a lisp. As a teenager she dyes her hair black and smokes to keep her weight down in between shifts at the local ice creamery, where she tries to impart a sense of bored irony with her sullen demeanour. She’s got a lot going for her, Crumpet does, but she’s not everyone’s cup of tea! 🙂

Share your celebrity baby names!

What’s their story?