Celebrities Are Really Out Here Naming Their Babies “Wolf”

Both Eve and Kylie Jenner just announced that they decided to name their newborn sons “Wolf.”

In an Instagram story, Jenner revealed that her second child with Travis Scott is called Wolf Webster, which makes some degree of sense, as once you’ve named your eldest Stormi, it’d be a bit weird to pivot and follow up with a Paul or Caleb. Also, the Kardashian-Jenners do famously have a thing for alliteration.

Eve and her husband, British business guy Maximillion Cooper, have decided to call their kid Wilde Wolf Fife Alexander Somers Cooper. It’s a name that also makes sense in its sibling-context—the baby is Eve’s first and Maximillion’s fifth, and if you look at his brothers and sisters (Lotus, Jagger, Cash, and Mini, all very in keeping with the whimsy-heavy British celebrity baby name tradition), Wilde Wolf fits right in.

I have no kids and no pets; there’s not a creature on this earth that I’ve ever been tasked with naming. Still, I love browsing the Name Nerds subreddit, where anonymous internet users gather to debate the merits of different names. Most posts are from users looking to crowdsource honest opinions on monikers they’re considering for their kids, for themselves, for their Sims, and responses can be pretty frank. Trendy “-eigh” names are deemed a “tragedeigh;” if you’re considering naming your baby boy “Riot,” the users of Name Nerds will strongly suggest that you do otherwise.

Perhaps my fascination with watching people debating the merits of different names is rooted in the fact that I grew up in a time in which tabloids and late night hosts conspired to turn a famous couple naming their kid “Apple” into what felt like genuinely major news. Nowadays, tons of celebrities name their kids something weird, plenty of regular people do the same, and it’s all kind of ceased to be a big deal, unless you’re throwing numbers in there. It’s a bit more notable, though, to see two celeb couples give their babies the exact same unique name within a 48 hour span.

The Wolf pack has plenty of company: A higher percentage of kids than ever are being given unusual baby names. According to a recent article in the Atlantic, in 1950, nearly a third of babies received a name that was among the 10 most popular in the year of their birth. These days, only 7 percent do. “Today, many parents seek out less popular names to help their kids stand out,” reads the article. “But in the past, parents typically picked common names, consciously or not, so that their kids would fit in.”At this point, the most normal thing a new parent can do is name their kid something a bit weird.

So, what do the sages at Name Nerds think? When it comes to Wolf Webster, the consensus seems to be that it’s…fine. “Tbh in terms of weird celeb names, and in comparison with his cousins,” wrote one user, “it’s not that crazy.”

“Yeah,” said another, “I’m at the point where I [gave] a half hearted shrug and thought “you know I honestly expected worse.”