There’s been a lot of talk on Twitter these past few days about the Beckham’s baby daughter and their choice of name for her.
One of the many tweets I have seen snottily said the name sounded liks a brand of toilet cleaner. On the contrary Harper is a lovely name and not strange at all to those of us with pre-teens into the Wizards of Waverley Place (Harper being one of the main characters in the show).
The baby’s middle name, well I have read several explanations for that, including it’s the number of her dad’s footy shirt, the month she was born, the time she was born and the time she was conceived. Middle names are a strange thing – I always felt left out at school as I didn’t have one, my daughter on the other hand has two and both of them mean something to me and her dad.
Middle names are a chance for parents to remember something or someone special to them. One of my daughter’s names I gave in memory of my mam, who died when I was 18 – how I wish she had been there during my pregnancy, when my daughter was born and every day afterwards. Giving my baby a version of my mam’s name was very important to me, and that brings me back to Harper Seven.
The baby’s name is nobody’s business but her parents’. While clearly there’s a public interest in anything the Beckhams do, whether her name means something personal to them or whether they were just looking for something that’s instantly recognisable, we don’t know, but cheap digs on Twitter at their choice of name is too much.