Naming your baby can come with a lot of pressure. Will the name be the right fit? Will your child get made fun of? Will you even like the name in a year or two?! And when you have to factor in other people’s opinions as well — like those of the royal family — then it can feel downright impossible to settle on a moniker. It’s a wonder any of us even have names at this point!
You shouldn’t care a lot about what other people might think when you name your baby, but you might want to care a little. Otherwise, you might accidentally name your child something that sounds mildly inappropriate, like Amy Schumer! You could also spark family ridicule for your name choice, which will be stressful trying to navigate while dealing with all the other postpartum issues. Nobody wants that!
Taking into account how you feel about the name is important, too. I’ve always practiced yelling the name out at a playground to see how it would feel. But if you do end up changing your mind and wanting to legally change your baby’s name, you wouldn’t be alone. Plenty of celebs have done the same, like Kylie Jenner.
Other celebrities have named their child something that shouldn’t even be a name (looking at you Elon Musk) or waited months before picking anything. I guess you would just call them “baby” until you settled on something official? Either way, it makes for an interesting story!
Check out the biggest celebrity baby name controversies below.
Prince Harry & Meghan Markle
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle named their daughter Lilibet when she was born in 2021. This was in honor of Harry’s grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, who was called Lilibet by family. Although this was likely meant as a sweet tribute, sources say that the Queen was actually upset about the name.
Robert Hardman alleged in his book The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy, “One privately recalled that Elizabeth II had been ‘as angry as I’d ever seen her’” about the baby name.
However, other sources told Us Weekly that this was simply not true. “Meghan and Harry 100 percent got permission from the queen to use the name Lilibet,” an insider said. “The report is not true. They don’t know where this is coming from. [They are] shocked that this is coming now; it seems out of nowhere and out of left field. They just feel like it’s more of the same smear campaign that continues against them.”
Elon Musk & Grimes
Elon Musk has done his fair share of controversial things, but one that really made people mad was his choice of baby name for his son, who was born in 2020. The tech mogul originally named his son X Æ A-12, but that name was not allowed in California because you can’t have numerals in your name, per PEOPLE. So they changed his name to X Æ A-Xii and call him “X.”
They also have a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl, whom they call “Y,” “Why?” or “?” according to Grimes, although her legal name hasn’t changed because the “government won’t recognize that.”
Kylie Jenner
When Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott’s son was born in Feb. 2022, they thought they had the perfect name…until they didn’t. The couple originally named their son Wolf, before announcing a few days later: “FYI our son’s name isn’t Wolf anymore. We just really didn’t feel like it was him. Just wanted to share because I keep seeing Wolf everywhere.”
After making the world wait a while, they decided to rename their son Aire. Jenner opened up about the decision on an episode of The Kardashians. “I just always wanted a name for him that had meaning. I like it and [Aire] is a Hebrew name [that means] lion of God,” she said. “The advice I would give to you is find your name before your hormones start raging and you have the child.”
Amy Schumer
At first, Amy Schumer and husband Chris Fischer didn’t see anything wrong with naming their son Gene Attell Fischer — until they realized it sounded like “genital fissure.”
“Do you guys know that Gene, our baby’s name, is officially changed? It’s now Gene David Fischer,” Schumer announced on the 3 Girls, 1 Keith podcast. “It was Gene Attell Fischer, but we realized that we, by accident, named our son ‘Genital.’” Yikes!
Bode Miller
Bode Miller and wife Morgan Beck simply couldn’t decide how to name their daughter, born in 2021. The former Olympian told TODAY in Jan. 2022, “It’s hard because her personality is different, and I think we’re all trying to get used to it. She’s stumped us on names so far. We have a lot that we like, but she hasn’t smiled or high-fived or anything when we say them to her, and we say them to her all the time.”
He added, “Our three front-runners are Skyler, Scarlett, and calling her Lettie, or Olivia, and calling her Liv. All [the names] kind of have a special meaning to it. So we may have to reach out to our social media followers and ask for some assistance because she has not really been giving us many answers.”
Six months after her birth, they finally settled on a name: Scarlet Olivia Khione Miller.
Will Ferrell
Will Ferrell named his son Magnus when he was born in 2004, which is Scandinavian for “great one.” But the big name has nothing to do with ego.
“My wife [Viveca Paulin] was born in Sweden, and we loved the idea of a Scandinavian name,” he told PEOPLE. “I’ve gotten a lot of flack: ‘What kind of ego do you have to have to name your child the great one’? That is not it at all.”
Khloé Kardashian
Khloé Kardashian and Tristan Thompson couldn’t decide on a name for their baby, born in July 2022, so they did something a little unusual. Baby Tatum’s name was originally “Baby Kardashian” on his birth certificate! She officially changed his name in Aug. 2023, per PEOPLE.
Lauren Conrad
When Lauren Conrad’s son Charlie Wolf was born in Oct. 2019, she was accused of stealing the name from Zooey Deschanel, who named her son Charlie Wolf in May 2017. (Because no two people can have the same baby name.)
She addressed the controversy in an interview with Us Weekly, calling the matching monikers a “coincidence.” “It sounds like I’m a follower,” the Hills alum said. “They’re just both family names. Charlie, or Charles, is a family name and a name that my husband and I both really like, and then Wolf actually comes from his side. I found it on a really old trunk at his grandmother’s house and she was like, ‘Oh, yeah. We had a bunch of wolves in our family,’ so it kind of stuck with me and I just liked it.”
“It took me so long to figure out a name, and the only reason we picked it is because we couldn’t leave the hospital without doing so,” she continued. “We needed to put something on the birth certificate, so for the first day and a half he didn’t have a name and I was, like, really stressed about picking it.”
Kourtney Kardashian & Travis Barker
Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker faced backlash in their own home with the choice of their baby boy Rocky Thirteen’s name. While Kardashian was still pregnant, the Blink-182 drummer revealed their name choice on the Complex GOAT Talk.
His daughter Alabama Barker responded, “That’s so bad!”
“That’s this name that’s just been going in my head lately,” Travis said.
Alabama teased him, “Even he knows it’s bad,” she continued.
“It is, it is bad,” the drummer admitted.
Later, Alabama pointed out he might have trouble at school with the moniker. “Let’s see how this goes when he’s at school: Rocky…Thirteen,” she said.
Once the baby was born in Nov. 2023, however, Alabama came around. She told E! News, “It’s a cool name. We all have very authentic, weird names.”
“I love Rocky, I do,” she continued. “Definitely like Rocky.”
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