Jessica Alba’s Surprising Baby Name Choice

August 16, 2011 at 8:40 am , by Julie Knapp

Jessica Alba gave birth to baby number two last weekend. If you haven’t already heard, she named her second daughter Haven Garner. What’s the story behind her baby name choice? Linda Rosenkrantz and Pamela Redmond  of Nameberry offer their insight on the celebrity baby name.

Haven Garner is the unusual and surprising choice of Jessica Alba and Cash Warren for their newborn second daughter.

Haven is a heaven-related word name that first hit the U.S. Top 1000 for girls in the late 90s and has been edging upward ever since, now standing at Number 651, with 446 girls receiving the name in the last year counted. While not as religious or as popular as Heaven or even its trendy flip side Nevaeh, Haven feels both spiritual and trendy, suggesting a safe harbor.

Haven relates to the spiritual side of her big sister Honor’s name, more in the vein of word names like Destiny and Trinity than virtue names such as Faith and Hope. Both names also obviously start with H and contain five letters in two syllables.  Their biggest difference: Vintage. While Honor has been used for hundreds of years, as far back as the Puritans, Haven is newly-minted.

The best-known bearer of the name is writer Haven Kimmel, author of the memoir A Girl Named Zippy.

The baby’s middle name, Garner, is a surname meaning “granary” that she shares with her father, whose full name is Cash Garner Warren.

Linda Rosenkrantz and Pamela Redmond Satran are the creators of the baby name site Nameberry and the authors of ten bestselling books about names, including Cool Names for Babies and The Baby Name Bible.

1. by NSmoot

   On August 17, 2011 at 12:05 pm

   My daughter is also a Haven. I’ve got 5+ months on you Jessica Alba…stop trying to steal my daughter’s thunder! LOL!

2. by Mike B

   On August 18, 2011 at 7:58 am

   An unusual celebrity name would be something normal, like David, William, Robert, Christine, Lisa or Mary. I expect them to start putting punctuation marks and symbols in the middle of names next. Here comes D!pth0ng Kardashian!

3. by Haven

   On August 18, 2011 at 5:59 pm

   I like that they called my name “newly minted”…makes me feel a very young almost-40, LOL

4. by queenbee

   On August 19, 2011 at 8:25 am

   Haven means a safe place–and garner means to gather or they say–a granary–so Jennifer’s daughter’s name means a safe place for grain.

5. by snookiboo

   On August 22, 2011 at 8:46 am

   Still think that Haven is a stupid name.

6. by Anya

   On August 30, 2011 at 12:16 am

   Nothing wrong with the name, but this is shocking since Alba is usually painfully stupid in interviews.

7. by princess pea

   On August 31, 2011 at 4:53 pm

   HEY AT LEAST ITS NOT APPLE OR COCO LIKE SOME CELEBRITIES!!! ABOUT TIME CELEBS CHOOSE DECENT NAMES!!!

8. by Fossil Outlet

   On September 16, 2011 at 8:23 am

   1.) Locksmithing

9. by Portland SEO

   On September 20, 2011 at 2:58 pm

   Hi Dana,

10. by Robbin Zieser

    On November 11, 2011 at 7:16 am

    Gaga attributes very much of her earlier results as a mainstream performer to her lgbt fans and is actually considered to be a lgbt icon

11. by Numbers Strehl

    On December 25, 2011 at 7:53 pm

    Just bookmarked you!!

11 Responses to “Jessica Alba’s Surprising Baby Name Choice”