Lucy Mangan writes about the birth of Gywnneth and Chris’s new son, Moses:

According to babynamesworld.com, which, frankly, I regard as the oracle on such matters, Moses means “saved; child; taken from water”. One might suppose therefore that Ms Paltrow opted for a water birth, and not the favourite celebrity birthing method de nos jours, the caesarean (for surely he would have been named Caesar?). Or perhaps Martin is merely paying hommage to his fellow do-gooder rockstars: Sir Bob Geldof named his first-born after a fruit, Peaches, and Bono has a son with a biblical name, Elijah.

It’s true that babynamesworld.com does claim that meaning for Moses, and that just shows how silly name-meanings are. Because it’s surely fanciful that during the purge of newborn Jewish males Moses’s parents thought “I know, we’ll chuck him in the Nile, which ordinarily would get the social services onto us, but if we call him taken from the water then that will ensure he’s saved, and even if he’s not it’ll be a pretty good defence.”

Moses means taken from the water just as much as Job means afflicted one (ooh, bad luck, kiddo — didn’t your parents see that one coming?) or the recently-popular Kylie means button-sized popstress.

Moses means Moses. Kylie means Kylie. And Apple means I’m going to have to be sent to a very expensive school if I’m to avoid being beaten up.

Tags: meanings, names