Mindy Kaling paid tribute to her late mother, Swati Roysircar, by naming her first child after her.
The actress, 38, welcomed her daughter named Katherine Kaling on Friday, December 15, and the birth certificate obtained by The Blast revealed that the baby’s middle name is Swati.
This isn’t the first time Kaling honored her mother, who died of pancreatic cancer in January 2012. The comedian’s hit show The Mindy Project was inspired in part by her mother’s years as an OB-GYN at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Wrinkle in Time star revealed that she was pregnant while appearing on the Sunday edition of the Today show in August, and she told host Willie Geist that her late mother set a great example on how to be a good parent.
“My mom was incredibly fierce and so devoted to us, just loved us and really wanted us to be happy no matter what we did,” she said at the time. “My career choice was not something that she was familiar with and she was just so supportive of that. And if I could give that to my child, just that open-mindedness, I’d be so happy.”
The Office alum has been known to keep her personal life private and has not yet shared the identity of her baby’s father, and according to the outlet, she left the father’s name off of the birth certificate.
The star talked about her desire to have children in an interview with Yahoo! Style back in September 2015 and said she wasn’t too concerned about who the father would be.
“I think I’ve decided that unlike everything else in my life, I’m going to be fast and loose about kids,” she said then. “I’m going to not actively plan, but if it happens, it would happen. I’m not cavalier about who I would have a kid with. But the thing I ask every parent that I really admire, the one comment they all have is that they wish they had kids earlier.”
