Yesterday morning I saw this on the AP wire:
LOS ANGELES - Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage is a dad - again.
Alice Kim Cage gave birth Monday to a boy, Kal-el Coppola Cage, in New York City, said the actor's Los Angeles-based publicist, Annett Wolf...
Now, of course congratulations to the both of them, but what struck me funny about this was the baby boy's name, "Kal-el." For those of you who may not know, Kal-el is the "real" name of comic book hero Superman (here's the Super Family family tree). I've heard that Nicolas Cage is a big Superman fan (he sold his comic collection in 2002 for millions), so I'm not surprised. But I guess I am a little disappointed.
I'm not one to worry so much for the kid - kids are resilient and there certainly isn't a shortage of kids with different names out there. But can't Nicolas Cage get outside of himself for one second and think of a name that doesn't have anything to do with his own personal obsession? I didn't name my kid Le Corbusier or The Great Mazinga, not just because my wife would never agree, but because my kid has to live with the name long after I'm dead.
Then again, the more I think about it, what the hell. Everyone's gotta have a name, it's not that bad, and at least it's unique. According to the Baby Name Voyager, over 60 out of every million babies born in the US in 2004 were named Elvis, which, if we're worried about naming kids after personal obsessions, would have been way worse.
Actor Nicholas Cage and wife Alice parents of boy [San Jose Mercury News]