Tuesday, April 18, 2006

The biggest story of the day!

After reaching the outer limit of socially acceptable behavior when he made a bizzare comment about eating the placenta, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes finally had their daughter today. As luck would have it, his nemesis Brooke Shields had her second child today, too.

The Cruise baby is allegedly named Suri, whereas Brooke Shields' daughter is named Grier.

Neither of these is particularly common, which, of course leads back to last week's spirited Gwyneth Paltrow-inspired debate on celebrity baby names. On Monday, an anonymous commenter objected to the discussion, stating:

Not clear what you all are basing your ideas of "bad names" on. Why would anyone want to be named Mary or John or Lisa like everyone else in the world? People become who they are based on WHO THEY are, not their names. Don't buy into the hype of "bad names" - there's a lot of terrible people named Ted and Charles. If you're just speaking anecdotally, it's not a good argument.

Of course, my point wasn't about the personality of the children, but a subjective take on whether the name is aesthetically pleasing. But maybe we shouldn't be so judgmental about the children's names -- after all, it's not their fault.

Since this is a hot topic, everyone's weighing in -- it's being featured on Nightline tonight as I type. Apparently, there's at least two potential rationales for the trend towards unusual celebrity baby names: self-expression and competition.

And for the record, there's some serious Gwyneth backlash.

Update (4/19 @ 11:51 pm): Check out what this site thinks Suri Cruise will be doing in 2030. Hilarious!

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