Celebrity Baby Names: Singular Suri

Some sources say Suri is Arabic for rose, which is simply made up. In Arabic, “Suri” is an adjective meaning “Syrian.” (It’s the masculine form of the adjective, though, so a weird girls’ name.)

I’m a fan of Mark Ruffalo, but I had no clue he’d named his daughter Odette. That’s just plain awesome and definitely my favourite on this list.

While names like Alabama and Huckleberry may not have caught on with the general public, they are relatively trendy among the celeb set – Travis Barker also has an Alabama, and brad Paisley has a Huckleberry (MN).

Part of the issue with these kinds of celebrity names is the perceived outlandishness of them: Apple, Bluebell, Rocket/Rebel/Racer/Rogue, et al. That seems to put them in a different category to Suri, Nahla, Odette, which are merely obscure.

I love love love Ramona. Love it. It is the perfect quirky/cool name for the daughter of the ‘first couple’ of indie film.

Honestly, I love some of these names that haven’t caught on… maybe with time? Ones I like on some level (and it might be the quirky mn level):

Bluebell
Huckleberry
Odette
Ptolemy
Ramona
Thijs
Zeppelin

But, Suri? Nope. I just hear surrey or sometimes slurry – I don’t like it.

Too odd, doesn’t match the style of the moment, and the parents themselves are too controversial. The little girl is photographed wearing high heels and magazine articles talk about her million dollar wardrobe.

I go through birth announcements for my blog (names4real.wordpress.com) and I have found three Suri (One was a Surri.) It definitely isn’t getting much attention.

The name itself, I think of Surrey, England and Surrey with the fringe on top.

Zuma is another one I think should be on this list.

I would never choose it, but Sunday has grown on me a bit!

I really like Suri, but would never use it.

As for the name of the day, Coco, I love Coco! I think it was a sweet way to name her after her mother- COurtney COx.

I agree with Andrea; it’s a bit too out there and the escapades of her father didn’t help any. I too think of Surrey, England, and the song from Oklahoma. It also has a made up quality about it due to the spelling, I think.

As for the other names, I have an Alabama Clementine in my family tree along with a Sarah Nevada, but will probably not use the state names. I prefer the classics from my own family tree. Which is why I am so happy that I found an Ambrose in the thinner branches!

Jean, Sunday has grown on me, too, but I would use it either. Nahla is too Lion King for me. Bluebell is an ice cream brand in my region, but I adore Primrose. I lived in NYC so Bronx and Brooklyn are not my style. Great blog!

It is odd that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s children together all have “stylish and not all that imaginative” names. But with other people both Tom and Nicole named their children Suri and Sunday, which are both names on this list!

Honestly, I think that the name Suri is a little strange. But as it turns out, Suri is a word jumble of Cruise, minus the C and E. I bet that was the main reason for selecting the name, rather then the actual meaning behind the name.

Suri is a cute name, but the fact that it’s SO unusual and the Cruises are SO high-profile means that selecting it would result in a million responses of “Oh, like Tom Cruise’s kid?” Who wants that?

The reason I would say people haven’t started using Suri, Apple, Nahla and the ilk is because they are so associated with the celebrity child – they are very, very unusual to begin with, and very few people want to look like they copied a celebrity. Obviously this doesn’t work for every name, but Violet, Stella, Cruz … Cruz was already a popular Spanish name. Violet is a vintage name, accessible because it’s a flower, and because it was no doubt the name of a lot of today’s parents’ grandmothers. Stella’s been fairly common here in England for a good twenty years now. They’re just a lot more accessible

For some reason, I don’t find Suri all that odd. It sounds feminine and sweet to me, along the lines of Sadie or Molly, yet distinct and special. I don’t see it as unusual or obscure as something like Apple, Bluebell, or Zeppelin – it could be because those names are distinctly “word” to me, whereas Suri sounds (and is?) a name. Astonishingly, I could actually imagine myself calling a child Suri, despite the fact that it is nearly the opposite of my style. I agree with Twinkle that the fact that Suri has not caught on among the non-celebrity set is very much a reflection on Suri and the Cruises, not just her name. People worry that they’ll get looks for naming a daughter Harlow (Harlow Madden, anyone?), but could you imagine the looks with Suri? At least there is another connection – other than Miss Madden – with Harlow, namely in the form of actress Jean Harlow.

For interest’s sake, apparently Suri is a transliteration of Souri, a Farsi female name that actually does mean “red rose.” I find it unlikely that Suri is a derivation of Sara, despite its similarity to something like the comfortable Sarah nickname, Sadie…

Lemon

Thanks for all these great comments. You’ve all raised so many wonderful points. I would say, though, that some highly celebrity baby-identified and otherwise “unique” names have caught on with the general population — I’d cite Maddox and Pax and Harlow as prime examples.

But again, the image of the parents and the children themselves is going to play a role in whether people want to imitate those names. I think Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have a generally positive humanitarian, hip image and their children are very cute and dressed more like kids and still look cute and hip. Maddox is also a surname name and similar to Madison. Maddox did inspire some namesakes even in N.D. both for boys and girls. I’m starting to see the name pop up occasionally on early elementary lists and I’ve seen it in birth announcements. Not so much with Pax or Zahara. The popularity stats beginning with the year he was adopted and continuing to now bear out that he was the inspiration for the name. It was extremely rare before she adopted him. Shiloh was used occasionally before their kid was born so I never know if it’s a Jolie-Pitt inspired name or a Civil War battle or a Southern town or Biblical reference. There is one high school girl with the name graduating this year. They’ve toned down the media exposure for all the kids so I doubt that the twins will inspire as many namesakes. Some of the namesakes are inspired by magazine covers and cute pictures in magazines.

Harlow is a name that fits with surname trends, sounds a bit like Harley and Hayley and Hayden, etc. and there are pictures of Nicole Ritchie’s daughter in some of the magazines/web sites. I think her image is more likely to be used and won’t be seen as a Nicole Ritchie knock off. Some people may not even be aware of where they got it but will hear it in the air. If a name is going to take off it needs to fit the style and the namesake can’t be seen as negative.

Oops. I meant her name, not her image, will be more likely to be used.

Some of the celebrity names are just too strange to become popular and people will laugh at ones that are so attached to the celebrity that they name their kid after the or the celebrity’s child. Somewhere in eastern North Dakota there is a little girl named Apple’lynn who was born a few weeks after Gwyneth Paltrow’s little girl and there’s a Beyonce who was born in western North Dakota about five years ago. There are about half a dozen girls named Shania who are now middle school age here, their births coinciding with Shania Twain’s greatest popularity. I bet all of those kids will hear “Like Gwyneth’s kid/Shania/Beyonce” when they introduce themselves. I don’t see Apple or Beyonce on the popularity charts.

I actually am seeing Sparrow quite a lot on Yahoo Answers, so maybe it won’t be long before they become mainstream.

With an Australian accent, Suri sounds like Sewerage

in fact its the same first two syllables of that word. Because of that I don’t ever see it ever catching on… thankfully

All I can think of when I see the word Suri is sewerage. Maybe because of this, I can’t see the appeal at all. But then, I also can’t see the appeal of Shiloh, and that doesn’t make me think of any unappealing words. I just don’t like it.
I know adults (aged 50+) called Odette, Thijs and Ramona – I can’t imagine someone giving their baby one of these names these days, but it’s funny how names come in and go out of fashion.
I’ve seen 2 birth announcements in the past 6 months with Huckleberry used as a middle name.

Suri is a superstar baby. Like Oprah and Madonna she is known by her first name only… that is a unique positon for a 4 year old!

Is it possible that maybe in the next ten years that some of these names will be used more by the public? I’m not saying they’d be common, but more used as maybe the teenagers or youth like them now more than the current adults having kids. For instance. I LOVE Orion & have for YEARS. Orion I would seriously consider using. I think a reason people might not currently use it is because it sounds too much like the surname O’Ryan. Sunday I do like because of the pet connection. Sparrow I really like. I actually Bluebelle & don’t get why people like Clover but not Bluebelle.Alabama I like but is TOO American for a non-American to use. Maybe, maybe as a middle name.Nahla is also pretty. I like these names, but the only one I would use is Orion because I’ve LOVED it for years. I do really LIKE the others, but I don’t LOVE them.

Overall, I think a lot of people don’t want to deal with the whole ‘ You’re copying a celebrity’. I always thought that was really silly, as to me it just means you like the name. I mean, if you heard a name of the playground, in church or from a family member you’re not copying them- but, if you use a celeb kid’s name, you’re copying them. It just seems silly to me because they’re also just people

When Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman named their adopted children Isabella and Connor, those names had not made it to the mainstream. If anything, they were the ones that sparked their popularity. Add to the fact that Celtic culture and roots was extremely popular at the time, giving momentum for Connor’s popularity, while at the same time, vintage names were just starting to sound refreshing to hipster parents, so something like Isabella was a sort of “why not?” and a precursor to the now overtly popular Sophia and Emma.

By the time Suri was born, Tom Cruise was a sort of joke to the papparazzi and the press. His status as the leading man had diminished significantly and he had become the butt of every comedian’s joke. Since Suri is quite unusual and only associated with the offspring of TomKat, I think this explains why it never caught on. I think associations have much more to do with than anything.

We named our cat “Suhrabi” which meant “wish giving cow” in hindi if I remember right. We thought it was funny. For short we called her “Suri”…

Then a year later Suri Cruise came around making us feel lame.

For all those who think “Suri” is a fabricated name, or isn’t in “much use,” I direct you to New York City’s baby names statistics. The name “Suri” can be found among the Top 200 names more than once for NYC’s annual list. The reason has nothing to do with New Yorkers being bigger fans of Cruise than most other folks. It’s because Suri is a Yiddish name for the Hebrew name Sarah. You can find the name Suri also included in Rabbi Alfred J. Kolatch’s work on Hebrew and English names, titled The New Name Dictionary. Incidently, this book was published in 1989 — long before the birth of the Cruise baby.

the strangest name on this list to give a baby is apple!!! I don`t that growing up she will like this name. and for suri she is so cute with her big blue eyes!!!!

Ramona will most likely be the name of daughter number 3 eventually.

I agree that the oddest name here is Apple. I really like Gwyneth and Chris Martin. But I have no idea why they would torture their daughter like that. Imagine what this girl would go through in her school…

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Great names..