Blue Ivy Carter is a pop culture phenom without ever having made a public appearance. Since moving into (and out of) Beyonce's gold -lated placenta, baby Blue has met the world at the VMAs, inspired a social media downpour, and was already featured wailing on a song with Hov' himself - a feat that remains unchecked on the bucket lists of many a pop starlet. Plus, she's also the latest installment in a long list of celebrity offspring that makes the American Name Society recoil.
The kid was bound to get a lot of attention based on her superstar parents alone, but conspiracy theorists took things to a whole new level. SEO-baiting Illuminati watchers claimed that "Eulb Yvi," or Blue Ivy in reverse, is the name of Lucifer's daughter in Latin. (Never mind that they forgot to check the Latin dictionary first.)
That theory turned out to be bogus. But Blue Ivy is only the newest addition to the Rodeo Drive class of eccentric luminary babies -- and with names like these, there's gotta be a conspiracy lurking in at least one. So we're taken five oft-scrutinized toddlers and given their names a more in-depth, academic, paranoid treatment.
Pilot Inspektor Lee Riesgraf (2003)
Parents Jason Lee and Beth Riesgraf admitted to liking a Grandaddy song so much it inspired their child's eponym. It's enough punishment that a first name like Pilot - inspired by the song's protagonist, a somewhat autistic and tech-weary compliment to Bowie's Major Tom - will likely garner enough playground bullying for one lifetime. But no, Inspektor was tossed in as casually as the last-second typo its spelling evokes.
Lee shares a first name with Grandaddy frontman Jason Lytle, and if that's enough reason to start a family tradition, then it's a shame he overlooked tracks like "Jed the Humanoid," "Chartsengrafs," and "E. Knievel Interlude." Could lil' Pilot Inspektor be a secret mole designed to infiltrate the TSA? We may not know until it's too late. These days, celebrity media is less concerned with Pilot, though you can rehash clever quips amid your doctor's stack of outdated magazines if you look hard enough.
Audio Science Clayton (2003)
Son of alt-it girl Shannyn Sossamon and children's book author Dallas Clayton, Audio Science's name takes Johnny Cash's 'boy named Sue' gender complex one step further by triggering possible identity confusion between infants and sound waves.
Sossamon claims the couple read through the dictionary three times before settling on Audio, while insisting "Science" was all but inked on the birth certificate from the start. There is no doubt Dallas Clayton, given his insight into the young psyche, spent weeks analyzing Erik Erikson's seminal texts on youth and selfhood before dreaming this one up. Our theory: The name's designed to steer young Audio away from common childhood pursuits and into a lucrative career in advanced physics as soon as possible.
Bluebell Madonna Halliwell (2006)
Perhaps the trippiest of these is Geri Halliwell's kid, whose name could be an ultra-feminist compliment to her Spice Girl past. While Halliwell chalked up the middle name to her daughter's bold cries, its possible Halliwell could be referencing the wails of a mandrake root being pulled from the soil as Bluebell exited the womb.
This is mainly because uttering "Bluebell Madonna" three times fast sounds eerily similar to "blue belladonna," which hearkens back to witches' cauldron recipes credited to feminists of Salem Witch Trial lore.
The name even implies an O'Keeffian look at womanhood and fertility, seeing as the bluebell is a spring flowering plant, and Madonna refers to the Virgin Mary. It seems those irritating 'girl power' earworms were more than Halliwell's secret homages to Margaret Thatcher.
Bronx Mowgli Wentz (2008)
Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson, scholars that they are, must be well aware that Mowgli is not just a Disney reference, but also the young feral protagonist of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. And surely, both parents must be familiar enough with the proverbial "concrete jungle" to realize certain Bronx streets are more terrifying than any scene in A Bronx Tale can convey.
Naturally, a silver-spooned child whose name contrasts urban jungles and actual jungles had media outlets bustling. An interview with Wentz revealed the consensus for Mowgli was simply the result of Kipling fandom, but never divulged the significance of Bronx. So while cryptographers weren't rushing to blow grant money on this one, fanatical conspiracy theorists at poorly dubbed Internet forums are still debating the symbolism of a blue bear named Baloo who uses coconuts for boobs.
Mars Merkaba (2009)
With Mars Merkaba, Erykah Badu brings a third bizarre baby name into her home, making her the mother of an S.E. Hinton-imagined family (think: Sodapop, Ponyboy and Motorcycle Kid).
Badu shows a penchant for double entendres, heavenly bodies (she also bore Andre Benjamin's son, Seven Sirius) and the mythological with her youngest child, whose name conjures up images worthy of a symbologist with Robert Langdon on speed dial.
Case in point: Mars is a planet in our solar system named after a Roman god, while "merkaba" is a chariot whose form and meaning varies widely among different schools of spiritualism. In other words, the differences between the god Mars riding the Hebrew God's chariot and using an inter-dimensional vehicle to make U-turns around a red planet's circumference are as indecipherable as Badu's songwriting throughout "Mama's Gun." This one deserves to be left alone.
--Ahmed Mori
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