Last year, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds welcomed their fourth child, but have yet to publicly share either the name or the gender of the youngest of their brood.
Last month, Lively’s close friend Taylor Swift released her latest album, The Tortured Poet’s Department. Now, Swift has a tradition, if you will, or a penchant for including the names of Lively and Reynolds’ three older children Betty, James, and Inez in her songs—Swift’s 2020 song “Betty” from her Folklore record is pretty straightforward (though only one of the girls’ names makes the title of the song, all three girls are mentioned in the lyrics), and James is namechecked in Swift’s song “Gorgeous,” off of 2017’s Reputation. Swift is known for dropping Easter eggs into her lyrics—so could the name of the Lively/Reynolds baby No. 4 have ended up on The Tortured Poet’s Department as one of the many names mentioned?
The Today Show decided to go to one of the primary sources this morning, asking Reynolds whether his new baby’s name made it to TTPD: “Taylor Swift keeps dropping it into lyrics, so just tell us this—is the fourth child’s name, the baby’s name, anywhere on the new record?” co-host Savannah Guthrie asked Reynolds, who was on the show promoting his new movie IF. “She’s been wondering if we’re going to have to wait for another song,” co-host Hoda Kotb chimed in.
Reynolds, jokingly dodging the question, responded “We always wait for Taylor to tell us what the child’s name will be.” He continued “We’ll say this. We’re still waiting—so, Taylor, let’s maybe start. You know, [she’s a] prolific writer. I mean, what are we doing here? And lazy’s not a word I’d attach to Taylor.”
Lively and Reynolds kept the three older daughters’ “Betty” namecheck a secret from them until the song was finished, Reynolds said in a SiriusXM Town Hall interview in August 2021. “We surprised them with it,” he said, per People. “They didn’t know. They had no idea.” He went on to joke, “We don’t tell them anything. We find they’re most compliant if you offer them no access to outside information.”
In 2022, Swifties thought she might have hinted at the new baby’s name in her song “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” which was released shortly after Lively announced her pregnancy—and features the name Daisy May (or Mae, we’re not totally sure). What we do know? That the baby was born in February 2023, and that Lively and Reynolds (and their circle of friends) are really good at remaining tight-lipped.
Later on in his Today interview, Reynolds dished on how he took care of the kids while Lively famously attended the Super Bowl with Swift in Las Vegas: “I took them all to the park, told them Mommy left when they were young,” he joked, adding that they had a “good time” together. “No one died, which was nice, and four kids, it’s just a zoo,” he said. “Like, you just surrender, right?”
Reynolds joked about the struggles of being a dad of four, telling Guthrie and Kotb “When we had our fourth, I was so happy because I always wanted to make sure that we had someone on hand to give me strep throat, and now we’re covered,” he said. “There’s just never a full, clean slate of health, ever.”
