Russell Brand is a dad for the first time.
More:This printable guide is about to solve all your baby-naming squabbles
It was confirmed to Daily Mail on Tuesday that the outspoken activist and comedian and his fiancée Laura Gallacher welcomed a baby girl last weekend. According to the publication, her name is Mabel.
Brand made the announcement that Gallacher had given birth during a performance at the Nottingham Playhouse on Sunday. “He was conscious of the clock and made sure he was offstage by just approaching 9 p.m. as he ‘needed to get down the fucking M21 as my girlfriend has just had a baby,'” said Daniel Crann.
Brand recently claimed he was considering raising his child gender neutral, but now that his daughter has arrived, we’ll have to wait and see if he follows through with that.
More: Caterina Scorsone welcomes her second baby
You might think Mabel (a diminutive of Amabel, meaning “lovable”) is a sweet, traditional name — perhaps not an obvious choice for the controversial Brand — but it actually has a pretty sassy history. It was a top 20 girl name in the 1880s and 1890s, and cultural references include Charlie Chaplin’s No. 1 leading lady Mabel Normand, jazz singer Mabel Mercer and the lead character in Pirates of Penzance. Today, Mabel remains comfortably in the top 1,000, charting at No. 578 in 2015.
Other stars who’ve chosen Mabel for their baby girls include Chad Lowe, Neneh Cherry, Bruce Willis, Dermot Mulroney and Carly Smithson.
Brand and Gallacher have had an on-off relationship for several years. After they reconciled for the third time, Brand proposed — enlisting the help of his future mother-in-law to make sure it all went as planned. The comedian confessed to getting pretty emotional during the big moment.
“I cried at my own beauty,” he said. “You know when you think, ‘I’m being so nice now, Oh God I think I’m going to cry’ because you’re impressed with how nice you are… I properly planned it and put proper ideas into it and made it all nice and did like a surprise party for her and her mum helped me to organise it, get her on side!”
Leave a Comment