Apparently Nicole Kidman has named her daughter Sunday.
 Now that, in and of itself, doesn't sound so bad for a celebrity. Sunday is a family day. It's a spiritual day. Naming a child after something like that, while strange, is not bad.
She was named after a woman named Sunday Reed, a prominent Australian from early in the last century. Here's a little bit of that first Sunday's biography:
Sunday Reed lived for nine years during the 1930s in a three-way love triangle relationship involving her arts patron husband and one of Australia's best-known artists, Sidney Nolan. She eventually became Nolan's muse. Nolan is best known in his homeland for a series of stylised paintings of famous
outlaw Ned Kelly, who battled police in an armoured suit and whose final days were turned into several films variously starring Mick Jagger and late Australian actor Heath Ledger, who died of a drug overdose in January. Sunday Reed was also niece of one of Australia's richest men and Nolan painted his Ned Kelly series, several of which hang in the Australian National Gallery, in her living room. Reed committed suicide 10 days after the death of her husband in 1981.
So the woman was promiscuous. She was an adulterer. She was involved in the artist scene, where they glorified violence. And she committed suicide. Of course you'd want to name your daughter after her!
But wait, it gets better.
Nicole and her husband Keith Urban had spent a long time looking at a quote by Nolan about birth, hanging in a Sydney art gallery, shortly before announcing
Kidman's pregnancy in January 2008. 'When you are young you are given a good view of life, because of your closeness to birth,' Nolan wrote.
Honestly, is that a good quotation? That doesn't mean anything. It's not well written. It's not poetic. Only people who truly have no class and no education could think that that is profound. What about these quotations:
Whoever saves one life saves the world entire. (Jewish proverb)
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
Maya Angelou
We cannot do great things on this Earth, only small things with great love.
Mother Theresa
No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
Helen Keller
And those are just off the top of my head!
Why do celebrities always think they are profound by celebrating that which is base, degraded, and not really that original? I think it's because they can't recognize true, simple beauty when it is before their eyes.
And so they have named their daughter after someone no one should want to emulate. And names do matter.
Increasingly people are rejecting the good, solid Biblical names that had meaning--names like Rebecca, Rachel, Hannah, Lydia, Elizabeth, Mary, Susanna--and replacing them with names that sound nice and novel, but are just fluff.
I want my child to have a name rooted in history and tradition. A name that is not new, floating away on the wind, but something that is grounded in meaning. Interestingly, people are far more likely to experiment with girls' names than with boys' names. Boys need the stable; girls can afford to be cute. But can you picture anyone taking a 40-year-old woman seriously with a name like Apple, Sunday, or Bryahnnna? (and I'm not kidding about the spelling of that last one. You should see some of the names that appear at the hospital where my husband works).
I guess it's because we think of our babies as playthings, rather than as creatures who will one day grow up and be independent. We should be preparing kids, from the moment of their birth, to be the mature, independent, responsible adults that we one day want them to be. So let's name them accordingly. Is that so much to ask? Labels: celebrities, names, parenting |
Stumble It!
I am so disappointed in "STAR" these days....do they have no sense at all!!! Why am I suppose to look up to them...??? What about Bruce Willis ...naming his kids...Rumor, Scout and Tallulabelle (sp)....UGGHHH!