Why Wynn won their hearts
Parents like how the unusual moniker looks and sounds
Sure, it was a Wynn-win situation. But despite the fun headline writers had announcing the city’s first baby of the New Year, this Toronto couple really just liked the look and sound of the name.
Wynn Christopher Laforet was due Dec. 28, but he arrived at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1 at St. Michael’s Hospital.
“It was crazy at the time — we got a lot of press out of the whole thing,” says dad Casey Laforet, a musician with the indie rock band Elliott Brood. “It was incredible as it was happening — doctors were debating when he would (arrive), would he be the last baby of the old year, or the first of the new year?” He was born right as the New Year’s countdown hit zero and champagne corks were popping.
Laforet and wife Jane Maggs, a screenwriter, had considered more common choices such as Henry or Oliver, but hadn’t settled on anything until the last week of 2012. That’s when the couple decided to take a second look at a book called Rock and Roll Baby Names, a gift from Maggs’ sister.
“We’d been through it before but had missed it,” says Laforet. When they hit the Ws, “I just said it, and she loved it,” Laforet recalls.
“Though Oliver was one I liked, then one day during the pregnancy, I heard it three times, with different mothers calling it . . .
“Wynn, I don’t know why, it was a visual thing for me. I liked the way it looked on paper.”
He thinks it was listed in relation to singer Steve Winwood, but “we didn’t choose it (for any meaning); I don’t even think we read the connection.”
Maggs, who is from Cornerbrook, likes that Wynn sounds like an old Newfoundland name. Wynn’s name is in the news a bit more now that the province has a Premier Kathleen Wynne, and the couple has since learned of an evil villain character, Wynn Duffy, on the television show Justified.
The baby boy’s middle name, Christopher, honours Laforet’s younger brother, who lived with the couple until recently.
So far, they’ve had fun playing around with their son’s name, calling him Winston, Winnie, Winnifred, Winster, Winter — “names that have nothing to do with Wynn,” adds Laforet.
“It’s funny because we haven’t called him Wynn much.”
As for Wynn’s star status — his birth made the front page — Laforet has even joked on a blog that he appreciates the understanding of his two bandmates “for putting up with the social media takeover of our sites that has come with his arrival (I think Wynn’s birth is the only thing that comes up now when you search Elliott BROOD).” Did you give your child an interesting or unusual name? Email krushowy@thestar.ca