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Beyoncé pulls name out of the Blue

Beyoncé and Jay-Z enjoy celebrity privilege of giving baby weird names.

By Kristin Torres

Published Jan. 20, 2012

The headline on US Weekly reads, "Why Did Beyoncé Name her Baby Blue Ivy?" It's quite simple, really. Because she can.

It's a fact of life that at some point in your life, sometime after selling millions of records and becoming an international superstar, then marrying another international superstar of equal or greater stature, that the idea of consulting a baby name book becomes itself unthinkable and pedestrian. You see, when a superstar and a superstar meet and fall in love, sometimes they join together in a sacred union and put out a collaborative effort. Whether that collaborative effort is a double album or another living and breathing being, the people demand that the end product has a cool name (Watch the Throne, anyone?).

We want to be reminded that celebrities are always cooler than us, better than us, and so rich that their future child doesn’t have to worry about being passed over for a job interview because his or her name is stupid. Being superstars—superstars with names like Beyoncé and Jay-Z, for the record—the couple simply couldn't name their child "Caitlin" or "Amber." Joining other celebrity babies like Jason Lee's Pilot Inspektor, Gwyneth Paltrow's Apple and Shannyn Sossamon's Audio Science, as the heir to Beyoncé's throne, Blue Ivy seems entirely appropriate. Modest, even. Perhaps they were simply giving the people what they wanted.

After the baby name announcement, Twitter erupted in deeply divided commentary. Was it Ivy Blue or Blue Ivy? What were the relative merits of either as a suitable name for a child? Wait, how isn’t that a street name for marijuana already? (Answer: According to a USA Today report, medical marijuana dispensaries in Hollywood have already named some product in her honor, so, at least now it is.) The commentary was accompanied by the inevitable dubious analysis and half-baked theories about the origins of the name, from claiming that “Ivy” came from the roman numeral IV—since the number four has significance to the couple, as they were both born on on the fourth and were married on the fourth—to suggesting that the name was a mix of the couples’ album titles, Jay-Z’s The Blueprint and Beyoncé’s _4_. Take that in for a second, normal people. Chances are, none of us will ever be able to even flirt with the idea of naming our forthcoming offspring after an amalgamation of our certified platinum records.

Another winning analysis was the possibility that the name backwards, “Eulb Yvi” was Latin for “Satan’s Daughter,” a fact debunked in light of there being no mention of either word in the Latin dictionary. As much as we might love to believe one of America’s favorite celebrity couples have deeply infiltrated the Illuminati, the fact of the matter will probably reveal itself to be much simpler. Beyoncé, Jay-Z and now Blue Ivy have more money than most of us will ever even aspire to—and they couldn’t care less what we think.