“Gemma Rose” 

Quite by chance, I picked out soccer star Michael Owen’s daughter, Gemma Rose, to serve as celebrity baby name of the day. It was then I noticed that yesterday’s choice also featured the middle name Rose.

A quick check of my database shows no less than five celebrity babies in 2006 alone with the name Rose as a middle name: actress Anna Gunn’s Eila Rose; soccer star John Terry’s Summer Rose; actor John Favreau’s Brighton Rose; comedian John Stewart’s Maggie Rose, and Melissa Etheridge’s Johnnie Rose.

The Social Security baby names stats show that the name Rose has been steadily declining in popularity for the past 90 years, slipping to # 333 in 2005, from # 15 in 1916. So what’s with all the roses among the celebs?

Maybe the name Rose is more popular as a middle name, which is also how English footballer Michael Owen and his wife Louise Bonsall chose to use it, when they named their daughter Gemma Rose in 2003. “Gemma” means “bud, or precious stone,” according to Alfred J. Kolatch’s Dictionary of First Names. That makes it a really nice combination with Rose, especially if you favor the “bud” meaning.

And you thought Michael Owen was only good for scoring goals.

Save to del.icio.us

Photo Credit: Creative Commons License, AFP PHOTO / LLUIS GENE

Technorati Tags: celebrity baby names, baby names, celebrity gossip,celebrity babies, Melissa Etheridge, Anna Gunn, Jon Favreau, John Terry, John Stewart, Michael Owen

When ordinary mortals break some baby naming rules, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. After all, who’s watching? The grandparents, some aunts and uncles, a few friends. Screw up — no big deal. But when a celeb does it — ouch. Everyone is watching. Including me.

Jon Favreau and his wife Joya Tillem just named their newborn daughter Brighton Rose. Oops. Brighton Rose is the name of a dinnerware set from Laura Ashley. Unless you have stock in the company, it’s not a great idea to name your daughter after a set of plates. Didn’t they do a Google search on ‘Brighton Rose’ before they settled on it?  Jon and Joya broke the first rule of baby naming – always look up the meaning of the name. Otherwise, you may get “suried” (I believe this is the first use in the English language of the verb “suri,” past-tense “suried,” meaning “to bestow a name on someone or something, without checking it out, and later discovering it means something totally different”). Anyway. Jon and Joya got suried when they named their baby Brighton Rose.

Rule number 2 — always check the initials of your prospective name. In this case, the initials are B.R.F. Now I think we all know how that’s going to play out when little Brighton is in second grade. And forget ever being able to monogram that expensive luggage when Brighton Rose goes travelling.

And finally, for the record, I even misspelled the name, as “Brighton Rock,” while I was writing this post. That’s the third rule that Jon and Joya broke — don’t give your baby a name  that is so close to something really famous, such as Graham Greene’s classic Brighton Rock, that people will always mix up the two.

Photo by Wesley Yip. Protected by Creative Commons Licence.

Technorati Tags: celebrity baby names, baby names, Jon Favreau, Jon Favreau baby, Brighton Rose Favreau, Suri, Suried