Alyssa Milano Gives Birth to a Boy

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Alyssa Milano gave birth to her first baby this morning. If you haven’t already heard, she named her son Milo Thomas. What’s the story behind her baby name choice? Linda Rosenkrantz and Pamela Redmond  of Nameberry offer their insight on the celebrity baby name.

Alyssa Milano and husband David Bugliari have named their newborn son Milo Thomas, joining a growing group of celebs who have chosen this lively, multi-cultural name. They were preceded in the Milo Club by Ricki Lake (the first, in 1998), Camryn Manhein, Sherry Springfield and Liv Tyler.

Baby Bugliari’s middle name honors Alyssa’s father, Thomas Milano. And the sharing of letters of Milo with Milano, makes a nice tie to mom’s family name.

Milo was a fairly common name from the late 19th century until the 1950s, when it completely dropped off the charts until 2001, probably helped back by its celebrity connections. It now ranks at Number 422 on the Social Security’s most popular names list.

Milo has roots in ancient Greek culture, as well as in the German and Irish. Its image combines the strength of the great ancient Greek wrestler of that name—a six-time winner of the Olympic games—with an energetic, modern o-ending feel. More recently Milo has been associated with the dashing Milo Ventimiglia, of the TV series Heroes, and as characters on Alias and in Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

Adults might associate the name with Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22, while kids will identify it with the cat in the movie Milo and Otis, and the main character in the children’s classic The Phantom Tollbooth.

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.

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Kimberly Stewart, Benicio del Toro Name Daughter Delilah

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

Kimberly Stewart, model and actress (and Rod Stewart’s daughter), and actor Benicio del Toro welcomed daughter Delilah on Sunday, August 21st. To find out more about their baby name choice we asked Linda Rosenkranz and Pamela Redmond Satran, the founders of baby name site Nameberry to weigh in.

With the birth of her new baby daughter, Kimberly Stewart has made her dad Rod Stewart a first-time Grandpa.

The baby, whose father is the charismatic Oscar-winning, Puerto Rican-born actor Benicio Del Toro, has been given the biblical name Delilah, a name that has succeeded in shedding its seductive temptress image to the point of becoming a popular mainstream choice.  Delilah is now Number 187 on the Social Security most popular list, the highest it has ever ranked.

The hauntingly melodic quality of Delilah has provided musical inspiration for decades, her praises proclaimed by singers ranging from Tom Jones to Chuck Berry to Queen to the Plain White T’s in their 2008 hit ‘Hey there, Delilah’.  Delilah was also the name of a character in When Stella Got Her Groove Back, played in the film version by Whoopi Goldberg.

Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin named their daughter Delilah Belle in 1998, and Sean Diddy Combs updated the spelling when he named one of his twin daughters D’Lila.

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.

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Jessica Alba’s Surprising Baby Name Choice

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

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.

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Tina Fey Names Daughter Penelope Athena, Find Out Why

Monday, August 15th, 2011

Tina Fey welcomed daughter Penelope Athena last week. To learn more about this celebrity baby name we asked the founders of baby name site Nameberry to weigh in. Here, Linda Rosenkrantz and Pamela Redmond give us the run down on Fey’s Greek baby naming style and how Penelope Athena may affect baby name trends.

For the second time, Tina Fey has looked back to her Greek roots in naming her daughter, and this time has used two names, Penelope and Athena, which reflect her Hellenic heritage.  Tina herself was born Elizabeth Stamatina Fey; her mother’s name, Zenobia (maiden name Xenakes), became the middle name of Tina and Jeff Richmond’s first daughter Alice.

Penelope is one of those formerly fusty, elderly-British-lady names that have recently been rediscovered by baby namers, probably revitalized by the far more dramatic image of Penélope Cruz. Definitely on the rise, Penelope jumped into the Top 200 this year, rising more than 700 places since it returned to the popularity lists in 2001, and is now more popular than it has ever been in this country. Penelope has been associated since ancient times with the faithful, long-suffering wife of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey.

It remains to be seen whether Penelope Athena Richmond will be known by her full name or by the traditional nickname Penny, which hasn’t been heard much since the 80s, but was a Top 100 nickname name in the mid-60’s, along with such perky pigtailed playmates as Patty, Peggy and Polly. Penny, too, has made something of a comeback, appearing as characters on Lost and The Big Bang Theory, but still is not in the Top 1,000 of the Social Security list.

Athena, on the other hand, stands at Number 360 on the list, part of the current trend of girls’ names beginning and ending with the letter ‘a’, including Ava, Alyssa, Anna, Adriana, Amelia, Alexa, Arianna, et al. A classic ancient Greek name, Athena was the daughter of Zeus who was the goddess of wisdom and patron of the city of Athens, and it works beautifully with the equally classic Penelope.

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.

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