Why Peaches Geldolf's Baby Name Announcement is Being Called a Rookie Mistake
With a name like Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof, we weren't sure what type of baby name the British model and TV personality would give to her first born. Would she go the traditional route? Or would she pick something in a similar style to the name her father, Bob Geldof, and mother, the late Paula Yates, gave her? Now we know!
Peaches, who is expecting a son in April with her fiancé Thomas Cohen, revealed that his name will be Astala Dylan Willow Cohen-Geldof.
"We found [Astala] in a baby name book - quite an obscure one," Peaches said. "We wanted something unusual but not ridiculous."
Obscure is right - there's not even an entry for it in BabyNameWizard's Namipedia -- though the meaning of the female name Asta, which is of Norwegian origin, is "love." The beginning is similar to Aster and Aston while most of the names with an -ala ending that we found in the Baby Name Finder are female ones (Michala, Kamala). The only male one that comes up is Tala.
As for the middle names, Dylan is said to be a nod to music legend Bob Dylan and Willow is in honor of Warwick Davies's character in the eponymous film.
The Geldof children are some of the first most memorably named celebrity kids following Frank Zappa's brood (Moon Unit Zappa, Dweezil Zappa, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan Zappa and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen Zappa) so there's been some buzz over which direction Peaches would go in with the baby name. Her own sisters are named Fifi Trixibelle Geldof, Little Pixie Geldof and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence Geldof.
One article reporting on Peaches' baby name selection -- which also noted that the child will be cursed with a lifetime of "hast la vista" jokes (we hope not because that's a pretty lame joke!) -- raised an interesting point worth mentioning. They called her decision to reveal the little Astala's baby name before his arrival a "rookie mistake." Noting: "There's a place for sniggering at kids' awful names, and it's behind their parents' backs, once said name is a done deal. If you let it slip pre-birth, the gloves are off - it's open season… and once one of your nearest and dearest has made a 'yuck' face, or laughed hysterically at your choice, can you really carry on regardless with it?"
So we'll leave you with this question: Where do you stand on revealing a baby name prior to the baby's arrival? Did you and your partner keep it a secret? Share it with a few people? Tell everyone? Let us know. And what do you think of Astala?
--S.B.
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