The apple of their eye
Mariah Carey has chosen characteristically elegant and understated names for her twin boy and girl. Alan Corr looks at the wacky names that pop stars give their children.
|  | | Peaches Geldof | The scene is the heavily-guarded junior infant's playground of Hollywood Junior High in LA. The year is 2017 and Moroccan and Monroe Cannon-Carey have just arrived in a pink, spangled SUV with tinted windows for their first day at school. The teachers look alert as the famous progeny are wheeled out onto a mini red carpet that unfolds at the flick of a switch from the SUV's dashboard and the school kids, well the school kids get ready to derive the maximum amount of fun from their new playmates' funny names.
This could be the fate that awaits Moroccan and Monroe when they rock for the first day in school. They are the new twin offspring of Mariah Carey and America's Got Talent host Nick Cannon. No doubt, they are both lovely children and their parents are justifiably proud of their darling new arrivals (a boy and a girl in case the names didn't give the game away) but how are those funny names going to sound when they grow up to be well-adjusted members of society?
We've all had nicknames in school and sometimes they last long into adult life. Celebrities save their kids the bother of earning a nickname in the first place and just saddle 'em with a weird name instead. Clearly it's in an effort to carry on their own fame and show the world just how damn kooky/different/unconventional they really are.
We might have expected this from a classy couple like the Beckhams (they named their kids Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz) but we would have hoped for something a bit more boring from Macrobiotic super humans Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin; they took the expression apple of their eye literally and called their firstborn Apple.
But it's the late, great Frank Zappa who wins every time. He called his kids Moon Unit, Dweezil and Diva Muffin, names that almost captured the spirit of the bonkers music he made. Not that the kids were overly impressed. "People think I'm wacky and they already think that before I walk in the room," Moon Unit has complained. "I spent hours locked away in my room. I was a complete hermit."
Zowie Bowie showed what he thought of dad David's taste when he changed his name to Joe Jones and moved to Ohio. Peaches Geldof, daughter of Bob and sister to Fifi Trixibelle, Pixie and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, has also made her feelings clear about her parent's choice in baby names.
"Why do the rich and famous give their children such ridiculous names?" she said back in 2004. "Mine has haunted me all my life, and will continue to do so." Peaches recalls being teased mercilessly at school with cries of "Oi, Peaches, are your parents bananas?" But she also knows it could have been a lot worse: "I was going to be called Angel Delight at one point," she said. "So I suppose I can count myself lucky." (RTE Ten)
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