Nameberry.com editors Pamela Satran and Linda Rosenkrantz — who penned the books Baby Name Bible and Beyond Ava & Aiden — are blogging for UsMagazine.com about why celebs choose the names they do, and what they mean.
Happy second birthday, Sunday Rose Kidman Urban!
Parents Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban stunned the world by choosing the unusual day name for their daughter, born July 7, 2008. Though Kidman's father suggested the name Sunday, inspired by Australian patron of the arts Sunday Reed, Kidman and Urban settled on the name because they love the day of the week.
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"That's our favorite day because if you're happy and you've got your family and the things around you, then Sunday's a beautiful day," Kidman told Oprah Winfrey three months after the child's birth. "So our baby's called Sunday."
After giving the two children they adopted together conventionally stylish names — Isabella and Connor — both Kidman and Tom Cruise made individualistic choices for the little girls they had separately, with Sunday much more unusual even than Suri, the name of Cruise's daughter with Katie Holmes.
There were only 29 girls named Sunday born in the most recent year counted, compared with 222 named Suri. In 2008, perhaps inspired by Kidman and Urban's choice, there were 22 girls named Sunday, but in 2007 there were only eight!
Sunday connects with several contemporary baby name trends. It is one of a new generation of word names, like Story, the name of Jenna Elfman's son, and True, the middle name of Meg Ryan's daughter.
It's also a spiritual name, like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's Pax, which means peace, and the popular Nevaeh, heaven spelled backwards. And it's a day name, ala actress Tuesday Weld or character Wednesday Addams.
Day names can also encompass month names such as January (Jones), season names like Winter (Nicole Richie's little girl Harlow's middle name) and time of day names such as Morning (also chosen by Richie as a middle name of her son Sparrow). Day names harken back to the ancient tradition practiced by many African tribes and were originally brought to the U.S. by early slaves.
Sunday's middle name Rose, chosen to honor Urban’s grandmother, is one of the trendiest middle names for girls, used by many celebrities. Michelle Pfeiffer, Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, Jon Stewart, Teri Hatcher, Ewan McGregor, Melissa Ethridge, Sylvester Stallone and Eric Clapton all have daughters with the middle name Rose.
