Actress Riley Keough has revealed the name of her baby girl and her choice honours her granddad Elvis Presley in the sweetest way.
Best known for her role in the hit Amazon series Daisy Jones & The Six, Riley Keough surprised fans back in January when she announced she had welcomed her first child, a baby girl, into the world back in August 2022.
Still keen to keep some privacy surrounding her newborn, Riley chose not to reveal her and husband Ben Smith-Peterson's daughter's name out of the public sphere.
Naming a child is a big responsibility and there are many choices out there to pick from. From cool baby names to royal baby names to cute baby names. Then there are names inspired by a whole host of popular media including baby names inspired by the hit show Succession and also Regency-era inspired names from Netflix's popular series Bridgerton. Whether you want something modern or, on the other end of the spectrum, a baby name that's been popular since the 1920s, the choice feels overwhelming.
But for Riley and Ben the choice appears to have been an easy one. As they prepare to celebrate their child's first birthday, in a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Riley shared her daughter's unique baby name and it has a super meaningful connection to her granddad Elvis Presley.
The name they chose is Tupelo Storm Smith-Peterson. The first name, Tupelo, references Elvis Presley's birthplace of Tupelo, Mississippi while the second name, Storm, honours the memory of Riley's late brother, Benjamin Storm Keough, who died by suicide in 2020.
Speaking to Vanity Fair about the name, Keough explained, “I was like, ‘This is great because it’s not really a well-known word or name in relation to my family - it’s not like Memphis or something.’”
But the actress admits that she may have underestimated just how much of her grandad's life was public knowledge, especially after Baz Luhrmann's hit movie Elvis starring Austin Butler came out in 2022.
“It’s funny because we picked her name before the Elvis movie,” Riley shared as she detailed the moment she realised how much Tupelo was mentioned in the film. She added, “I was like, ‘Oh, no’. But it’s fine."
Elsewhere in the interview, Riley revealed that she used a surrogate for baby Tupelo as she shared for the first time that she had Lyme disease.
She said, “I think it’s a very cool, selfless, and incredible act that these women do to help other people. I can carry children, but it felt like the best choice for what I had going on physically with the autoimmune stuff.”
The first time Riley revealed she had had her daughter was in a statement released following her mum Lisa Marie Presley's memorial service in January 2023.
The statement was written by Riley and read by her husband at the Graceland ceremony. Part of the speech read, “I hope I can love my daughter the way you loved me, the way you loved my brother and my sisters.
"Thank you for giving me strength, my heart, my empathy, my courage, my sense of humour, my manners, my temper, my wildness, my tenacity. I’m a product of your heart, my sisters are a product of your heart, my brother is a product of your heart.”
