While every baby’s name can be special, they may not always be set in stone, as some celebrity parents have opted to change their children’s names after they were born.
Some of these stars have also spoken out about why their babies’ names were just not the right fit for them. Most recently, Grimes revealed that she shortened the unusual name of her daughter, whom she shares with ex Elon Musk.
On Twitter last week, she posted a rare photo of her child, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, and revealed that her child was now going by just Y (pronounced “why”).
Along with Grimes, many other celebrities have changed their babies’ names – from Amy Schumer to Kylie Jenner. Here are seven famous parents who have changed their children’s names and what they’ve shared about it.
Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott
In February 2022, Kylie Jenner and her partner, Travis Scott, announced the birth of their second child, Wolf Webster. One mother later, the couple, who also share five-year-old daughter Stormi Webster, revealed that their son’s name was going to be changed.
“FYI our son’s name isn’t Wolf anymore,” she wrote on her Instagram Story in March 2022. “We just like really didn’t feel like it was him. Just want to share because I keep seeing Wolf everywhere.”
Nearly a year later, she shared her son’s new name, as she posted a picture of him on Instagram in January, with a caption that read: “Aire.” Earlier this month, it was reported that Jenner and Scott had officially filed to legally change their son’s name from Wolf Jacques Webster to Aire Webster.
Grimes and Elon Musk
During an interview with Vanity Fair in March 2022, it was accidentally revealed that that Grimes had welcomed another child, as the magazine’s journalist heard a baby crying in the singer’s house. The baby, born via surrogate, is Grimes’ second child with Musk, as they also share a two-year-old son X Æ A-Xii (nicknamed X).
At the time of the interview, The “Kill V Maim” singer said that she’d wanted to keep her daughter’s identity a secret, as her son was “just out there”.
On 23 March, Grimes confirmed that her daughter’s name had been changed from “Exa Dark” to “Y”, which will be pronounced as the word “why”.
“She’s Y now, or ‘Why?’ or just ‘?’ (But the government won’t recognise that),” Grimes wrote on Twitter.
Grimes’ tweet seemingly referred to the trouble that she’s had with the government recognising her son’s name. X’s full name was originally X Æ A-12, but the name reportedly violated California naming laws, so the number was changed to an “Xii”.
Amy Schumer and Chris Fischer
In 2020, the comedian revealed that she changed her son’s name, nearly one year after he was born. During an episode of Amy Schumer Presents: 3 Girls 1 Keith, Amy Schumer said that she and her husband, Chris Fischer, initially named their son Gene Attell Fischer, in honour of comedian David Attell. However, she said that they opted to change his name, after realising that it bore an unfortunate homonym.
“So do you guys know that Gene, our baby’s name is officially changed? It’s now Gene David Fischer,” she said. “It was Gene Attell Fischer, but we realised that we, by accident, named our son ‘genital.’”
Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick
Kourtney Kardashian has previously shared that when it came to picking her second son’s name, it took a while for her and ex Scott Disick to do so. Although their son’s official name wasn’t changed, Kardashian said, during an 2019 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, that she and Disick had to tested out different names for him when he was first born.
“I would try out a different name on different days,” she said. “One day his name was Preston, for one full day.” She then added that while Disick didn’t see this, at first, she “knew in her soul” that her son’s name was Reign.
Along with Reign, who is now eight-years-old, Kardashian and Disick share two other children, Mason, 13, and Penelope, 10.
Caterina Scorsone
Caterina Scorsone and her husband, Rob Giles, welcomed their third daughter, Arwen, in December 2019. However, four months later, the Grey’s Anatomy star revealed that her child would be going by her middle name, Lucinda, instead.
“I love my baby,” she wrote on Instagram, which included a post of her holding her then-newborn, at the time. “I love books. (By the way, we went with what was her middle name. Lucinda. “Lucky” for short.)”
Along with Lucinda, the couple share two other children: Eliza, 10, and Paloma, six.
Jamie Otis and Doug Hehner
Jamie Otis and Doug Hehner, who met on Married at First Sight, shared in May 2020 that they were changing their son’s name. In an Instagram Live, the former Bachelor contestant said that she wasn’t going to name her son Hayes, like she’d initially announced. She also noted that she felt “pressured” to call him this during her pregnancy.
Instead, she said that she and her spouse were opting for the name Hendrix. “The minute we had our son, the minute he came out, I looked at him, I mean, the first time I looked at him, I almost called him Hendrix,” she explained in the clip, shared days after her son was born. “That was like a top name for him.”
Hehner agreed and expressed his reservations about baby’s initial name, confessing: “I don’t know why we chose Hayes to begin with now.”
Stacey Solomon and Joe Swash
After Stacey Solomon and her husband Joe Swash welcomed their daughter in October 2021, the singer took to Instagram to share that their baby was getting a new name. On an Instagram Story at the time, she confessed that she had been calling her baby “Princess Pickle” at the time, since she realised that the name “Autumn” would create some unfortunate initials for the newborn.
“We loved the name Autumn but then we realised her initials would be A-S-S,” she explained, via Daily Mail. “So it helped us rule out all of the ‘A’ names.’” She later shared an Instagram post to reveal her daughter’s new name: Rose Opal Esmè Solomon-Swash.”
Along with Rose, Swash and the Loose Women host share two other children, newborn baby Belle and three-year-old son Rex. Solomon also shares 15-year-old son Zachary with ex Dean Cox and 10-year-old son Leight with ex Aaron Barham.
