REALITY TV star Kim Kardashian and her rapper boyfriend Kanye West are reported to have named their first child Kaidence.
Website Media Takeout claimed that the proud parents had settled on the name Kaidence Donda West, which kills several birds with one stone. Kaidence keeps alive the Kardashian tradition of giving children a name beginning with K, while Donda is a tribute to West's mother, who had the same name and died in 2007.
Media Takeout describes it as a "beautiful name", and it seems a better choice than the bookies' favourite, North, or even Knorth.
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However, it has still attracted a fair degree of criticism. According to the Daily Mirror, the name "is something we can imagine Tulisa would call a pet poodle". The paper reports that the child's moniker only emerged when a nurse let the cat out of the bag.
Fox News ranked Kaidence alongside other strange celebrity baby names, such as Bear Blu, the son of Alicia Silverstone. "You knew it was going to start with a 'K'," says Fox. "But Kaidence? Donda is Kanye's late mom's name, so that's cool. But Kaidence?"
By picking the name the couple were "eschewing the conventional spelling of Cadence, which is also a musical term for a sequence of notes indicating the end of a phrase," explains The Independent.
Salon picks up that theme, noting that cadence is "exactly the sort of thing that some critics argue is missing from West's punishing and atonal new album, Yeezus".
It adds that the name Cadence became popular after the 2003 film American Wedding. "The nation that made Kayden, Jayden and Brayden popular names took it from there," it explains.
However, the West-Kardashian spelling of the name does not appear to be unique. The celebrity couple may be interested to discover that their baby's name is shared by more than 200 characters in fantasy computer game World of Warcraft. One of the Kaidences to be found there is a warrior blood elf, a member of the Legends of Azeroth guild in the realm of Nordrassil.
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