Olympia Lightning Bolt – welcome to the crazy celebrity name game
Having made four of her own left-field choices, Annabel Meggeson is in favour of bold monikers
Iwas never one of those girls who played the My Future Baby name game. I hadn’t given baby names a second thought till two blue lines showed up. I was 26. But I’d yet to set off for my nearest Boots before the baby’s dad piped up: “I’ve always thought if I had a boy I’d call him Flash.” Now, I like to imagine that anyone else would have recoiled at such an outré suggestion, whereas I was the cool girl, who loved it straight away, and was therefore the perfect match for this crazy man I’d met only months previously. It would turn out I wasn’t, but Flash did end up being the perfect name for our son, who arrived the following summer.
I wonder if it was Kasi Bennett or Usain Bolt who came up with the name for their daughter Olympia Lightning. (Parents never come up spontaneously, simultaneously with an agreed name; it’s a back and forth process, after the bravest of them makes the first move.) But is it really that unusual, especially as people – and by people I mean especially celebrities – have been giving their children increasingly left-field names for decades? I’d wager there are as many shrugs at Usain’s great reveal as there are jaws on the floor.
However, back in 2002 when I first introduced the name
Flash, I was met with unschooled horror from family and friends, who accused me of everything from selfishness to child abuse. But if you genuinely back a prospective name for a future child, it shouldn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Friends of mine who hesitate to share their baby name suggestions are afraid of an adverse reaction because they’re experiencing doubt themselves.
Our second child’s name turned out to be bit of a trailblazer. It was the girl’s name left over after Flash was born. My choice (only fair), Blue, originally came from a little girl who appeared on TV one Saturday evening when I was a little girl myself. I remember thinking she was the loveliest creature: with her long, blonde ringlets and bright, white dress. When she was born, my Blue had hair even darker than mine, but it was untouched by scissors until she was six – around about the time I was greeted at work one Monday morning by a slew of jokey emails: “You trendsetter, you!”; “Ha! You got there first.” Beyoncé had announced the birth of Blue Ivy that weekend. There were two more boys, who I called Moss and
Wolf. And while the Harrys, Isabels, Amelias and Edwards still far outnumber the more out-there names, there are more people following the celebrity trend for names like Romeo, Brooklyn, Cruz and Harper (Beckhams) or North, Saint, Psalm and Chicago (Kardashianwests) and Apple and Moses (Paltrowmartins).
Of the first names I gave my children, Wolf is the most common in terms of the response: “Oh yes, so-and-so’s got a son called Wolf too.” It’s also the name that my eldest deems “the coolest”. There was a week when he was about 12 when Flash had a meltdown about being called Flash and wished he had a more ordinary name (I think he floated Tom). I can’t remember how it went because he’s 17 now and his name is as much a part of him as his bones. When I mention Olympia Lightning Bolt he quips that he has got off lightly – at least his surname isn’t Dance.
When children’s names are preloaded with meaning, of course comes the worry that they won’t be a good fit for their personalities later in life. Luckily, Flash is one of the coolest people I know, but Moss doesn’t like it when I use the clarifier, “the green stuff that grows on rocks” (in fact, he was named after a beloved uncle and fun family friend, both of whom shared the nickname Moss), and Blue was momentarily upset when she realised the word could mean downhearted or depressed. I was quick to point out its many positive connotations so hopefully she feels, fundamentally, it’s too broad a signifier to saddle her with one particular mode. Certainly, it has a breezier neutrality than, say, Prada, Hashtag, Apollo, Thunder or Itouch (all real names, encountered in my new career as a teacher).
But the strange thing with names is, however much they conjure up a specific image or idea at the beginning, they quickly lose their unusualness and become indistinguishable from the person themselves.
So, welcome, Olympia Lightning Bolt. Eyebrows may be raised today, but it could be worse; imagine if your dad had called you Karen.