Category Archives: Sibsets in the News

Saturday Sibset: The Children Born of Elvis and Silence

25 Saturday Feb 2012

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Just as I began writing this article, Nameberry tweeted: Did you hear a name today you’d never heard before? Most days, my answer would be, Nope, pretty much the same old, but that day I could proudly say, Yes indeedy. Well actually I didn’t tweet back because I was too busy writing this, but I’m saying it now.

The Australia Day citizenship ceremonies are always a wonderful source for discovering new names. This is one where some of the childrens’ names were new to me, but the parents’ names were familiar. And yet it was the parents’ names that knocked me for six.

The Matanhire family moved here from Zimbabwe in 2006; they came from the predominantly Shona-speaking city of Mutare, whose name translates as “gold”. They started off in Melbourne, but are now happily settled in Adelaide.

The Matanhire family admit to being motivated by a spirit of adventure, loving to travel and see new places. Mrs Matanhire used to tour African countries as a nurse, educating other healthcare professionals about HIV and AIDS. When a relative who lived in Sydney told them how beautiful Australia was, it seemed like another adventure for them.

Mr Matanhire said becoming a citizen was like “taking a step into a new life”. “It feels very good, you feel like you can plan your life,” he said. Mrs Matanhire said becoming a citizen meant “you belong to the country; you belong to Australia”.

Elvis (aged 45): This is Mr Matanhire’s first name, which was covered as a Famous Name around the time of The King’s birthday anniversary. Once I would have thought this was too over-the-top for a regular person’s name, but now I actually love seeing it in general use. You pretty much assume the parents of anyone called Elvis were massive Presley fans, and this (rightly or wrongly) is how I am picturing Mr Matanhire’s mum and/or dad.

Silence (aged 41): Mrs Matanhire’s first name is a virtue name I saw covered at Names from the Dustbin. When I saw it, I admit to being quite horrified, because as a parent, the thought of your baby becoming completely silent is your worst nightmare. And as a Puritan name almost exclusively given to girls, it has connotations of women being forced into silence in an oppressive way. However, seeing it on an attractive, confident, well-travelled adult, who is clearly not being kept silent and in fact had to do a lot of talking as part of her career, I have softened a little. Now I can see a certain beauty in it, and it makes me think of the inner silence that comes through prayer and meditation.

Caroline (19): Usually the name Caroline doesn’t stand out in a family, but in this case it seems unusual compared to the others. Being the eldest born, I wonder if Caroline was given a family name.

Anesu (15): This is a Shona name which can be given to both boys and girls. For boys, it is the pet form of Isheanesu; for girls, the pet form of Anesuishe. In either case, it means “God is with us”. This Anesu is a boy.

Rumbidzai (4): A female name which means “praise”. I have read that it was originally a royal name, but don’t know if that’s correct. Rumbidzai was born in Australia, so is already a citizen.

Edret: Edret is Elvis’ sister who lives with the family; it’s possible she was the person who first suggested they come to Australia. Her name is a complete mystery to me, mostly because the Edrets I found online tended to be Hispanic men. Perhaps it is short for a longer name. Elvis and Edret make an impressive sibset.

Saturday Celebrity Sibset: A Taste of Scotland – Leigh McClusky and Simon Haigh

18 Saturday Feb 2012

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Last year we featured celebrity mum, Rosanna Mangiarelli, who took maternity leave from Channel 7’s current affairs show, Today Tonight, after the birth of her second daughter, Olivia.

The Today Tonight presenter that Rosanna took over from was Leigh McClusky, who was the show’s anchor from 1995 to 2007. She left when she became pregnant with twins, and later founded her own media and public relations firm in Adelaide. Leigh is currently the host of SA Life, a lifestyle show promoting South Australia. On her team of presenters is Michael Keelan, Grant Cameron, Briony Hume, Rosa Matto, and Pete Michell.

In 2000, Leigh married Simon Haigh, owner of Haigh’s Chocolates. This family-owned boutique chocolate business was started by Simon’s great-great grandfather, Alfred Ernest Haigh in 1915, and continued on by his son Claude. He left the business to John, Simon’s father, who trained in Switzerland, and now Simon and his brother Alister run the business together.

The family motto? “If you’re born a Haigh, you eat dark chocolate,” says Simon.

I’m so glad I am not writing this story at the age of six, for I would have cried with jealousy at children who had a dad with his own chocolate factory, and where you inherit a family tradition of eating dark chocolate.

Now grown-up, and unable even to finish my Valentine chocolates without generous assistance, I feel I can press on without too many tears.

The Haighs chocolate-inheriting children are:

Murdoch (born 2002)

Sigourney (born 2006)

Jock and Tansy (born December 2007, and 18 months younger than Sigourney)

The twins were born with the help of IVF, and according to Leigh, made their different personalities apparent even as new babies – Jock serious, Tansy laid-back.

There’s a Scottish theme going with the boy’s names, suitable for sons of someone named McClusky. Interestingly for the son of a journalist, Murdoch also has the name of a famous family of media magnates; most of us will have heard of Keith Rupert Murdoch, so often in the news recently because of his newspaper, The Sun. Leigh never seems to have worked for the Murdochs, so it may just be a coincidence. Jock seems to have been given the Scottish version of the popular boy’s name Jack.

Sigourney reminds us of American actress Sigourney Weaver. Ms Weaver’s real name was Susan, and she chose Sigourney as a stage name from an off-page character barely mentioned in F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Mrs Sigourney Howard, who is the aunt of the sporting Jordan Baker. It’s a surname occasionally used as a first name, often for males. Because of the actress and the classic novel, it seems very American, although Sigourney Weaver is of Scottish heritage too.

Tansy is the name of a bitter and toxic herb, considered useful in cooking, gardening and medicine for thousands of years. It has cheery yellow flowers, and is a good companion plant as it keeps away insects. A tansy is also a type of sweet omelette pudding, flavoured with the herb; British comedian Sue Perkins got slightly poisoned eating one on the entertaining Supersizers Go … series. The plant grows abundantly wild in Scotland.

(Both photos from the Herald Sun archives).

Saturday Sibset: Nine Children in Nine Years

11 Saturday Feb 2012

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Trudy and Clint Hill live in a five-bedroom house in South Penrith, a suburb on the outskirts of western Sydney. Clint works from home inventing fitness equipment, and Trudy is kept pretty busy, because she became pregnant with their first child in 2000, and then had nine children in nine years.

Trudy says, “I just fell in love with having kids. I love that whole experience of giving birth and having a newborn baby. For me, that’s really addictive and that’s what keeps me going back and having more.”

Family life is well-organised, and the Hills claim to average seven hours sleep a night. Trudy copes with stress by hitting the gym twice a week. In fact, Clint and Trudy first met at the local gym, and soon after they began dating, planned to have a large family.

At the end of the story, Trudy says she is open to the idea of having another baby, and says she might get clucky a bit further down the track – she’s never had the opportunity to get clucky before!

The Hill Children

Jett (boy), born February 2001

Cruize (boy), born November 2001

Bronte (girl), born March 2003

Reef (boy), born June 2004

Zye (boy), born October 2005

Finn (boy), born December 2006

Bay (boy), born February 2008

Skyla (girl), born May 2009

Nox (boy), born May 2010

This is a great collection of almost typically Australian on-trend names. The Hills seem to be very attracted to short names, as seven of the nine names are one syllable, and although the girls’ names are two syllables, neither has more than six letters. There is a noticeable absence of classic names, Biblical names, elaborate names, names with a long history of usage, or frilly names for the two girls. These are names that are fresh and punchy.

Although the Hill family are practising Christians, the names aren’t Christian-oriented, except maybe Zye, which might be short for Zion. However, it could also be seen as an attempt to Anglicise the Chinese word zai, meaning “young man”, or the Greek xy, relating to “wood, forest”. Nox even has the name of a Roman god.

If there is any particular “theme” to the sibset, I would say that it is one relating to nature, and in particular the beach. I think these are Australian surfer names, and show an affinity with the encircling sea and the great outdoors.

Saturday Sibsets: Sibsets from the Front Bench

17 Saturday Dec 2011

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Prime Minister Julia Gillard has reshuffled her front bench, and there are now more women in her ministry. We already know that Finance Minister Penny Wong has just become a mother, so we’ll look at some of the other mothers of young families on the Labor front bench.

Nicola Roxon has moved up from Health to become Australia’s first female Attorney-General. Many leading roles in government are now filled by women (our Governor-General is a woman named Quentin Bryce), which Nicola hopes is an encouragement to Australian girls. Nicola’s aunt Lillian was mentioned in Girls Names from the Top 100 of the 1930s. Nicola is married to Michael Kerrisk, who works for the Red Cross, and they have a six-year-old daughter named Rebecca.

Tanya Plibersek has taken Nicola’s old role as Health Minister, and moves into the inner ministry from her former positions as Minister for Housing and Minister for Social Inclusion. Her parents are migrants from Slovenia, and Tanya is the first Slovene Australian appointed minister. Tanya is married to Michael Coutts-Trotter, director-general of the NSW Education Department, and they have three children named Anna (aged 10), Joseph (aged 6) and Louis (aged 1).

Julie Collins has become a minister for the first time, taking on the portfolios of Community Services, Indignous Employment and Economic Development, and Status of Women. She is married to Ian, and they have three children named Lachlan, Andrew and Georgia.

(Photo from Sydney Morning Herald, December 17 2011. Julie Collins is on the far left, and Tanya Plibersek on the far right of the picture; Nicola Roxon is third from the left, standing next to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who is next to Governor-General Quentin Bryce).

There have been several babies born in 2011 to people in politics, so we’ll take this opportunity to do a quick round-up of all of them:

February: Liberal Senator for South Australia Simon Birmingham and his wife Courtney Morcombe welcomed their first child, Matilda Esma.

February: Federal Liberal MP Jamie Briggs and his wife Estee welcomed Scarlett Jeannine. Scarlett joins older siblings Henry and Elka. There were two other celebrity babies named Scarlett this year – Scarlett Mitchell and Scarlett Tander.

May: Layla born to Queensland State Labor MP Curtis Pitt and wife Kerry; siblings Isabel (dec) and Tristan

October: Adelaide born to Labor MP Craig Thomson and wife Zoe Arnold; big sister Matilda.

December: Matthew Ian born to Sunshine Coast Councillor Chris Thompson and wife Jane; big sisters Seanna, Ella and Mary.

December: Alexandra born to Labor Senator for South Australia and Federal Finance Minister Penny Wong and partner Sophie Allouache.

Midweek Sibsets: Sibsets of Successful South Australian Mums

07 Wednesday Dec 2011

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We’ve missed several weeks of celebrity sibsets, so today we will make up for it with a group of sibsets from some mothers in the public eye who have to juggle a busy working life with an often equally busy family life.

Peta Mantzarapis

Power-mum Peta is managing director of Maloney Field Services, a property consulting company for petroleum and natural gas companies. Just in case this wasn’t enough, to fill in her spare time she runs the children’s fashion label, Sebastian and Sienna, with her sister. Last year she won the Telstra South Australian Young Businesswoman of the Year Award.

She has a flexible workplace, and an accommodating helpful husband called Sam, but she’s still taken babies to boardrooms, had them asleep under her desk, tried to look cool in a meeting even though she’s just cleaned vomit off her car, and opened her briefcase to find it’s filled with toy cars and fairy wands.

Peta and Sam have two daughters called Sienna, aged 4, and Evangeline, aged 2; Evangeline is called Evie in everyday life. It’s a pretty, popular and girly sibset, and shows that owners of kid’s clothing labels do often use their own children’s names as inspiration.

Amanda Blair

Amanda is a radio presenter on 5AA, doing the 1-4 pm shift on weekdays. Before she had children, she says that she was completely disorganised and just did things to suit herself; now she runs on a tight schedule to military precision. Work is her “saviour”, as every afternoon she gets “adult time” where she can chat to other grown ups and have cups of tea.

She says it’s not possible to continue the life you had before children as a parent, and what she most misses is her friendships, which are often maintained with a brief phone call each month. Even though she has a nanny, her life still feels so “crazy” she wants to punch childless people in the face when they say they’re busy. However, she loves every second of it.

Amanda and her husband Michael Farquarson have four children, which they planned on a rigorous “breeding roster” for fear they would have trouble conceiving due to their age. Amanda considered herself completely non-maternal, but once she had one child was “hooked”, and immediately needed more of them, finding motherhood the best thing ever.

Their kids are Sidney (Sid), aged 7; Ginger, aged 5; Frank, aged 3; and Nancy, aged 2. Sidney is a boy and Ginger is a girl, in case you are wondering (see The Name Agender’s entry on Ginger for more information). It’s a lovely no-nonsense Australian sibset with Depression-era chic; there’s a school of thought that you can’t have famous couples’ names as siblings, but here we have a Sid and a Nancy! I’m not sure if it reminds anyone else of Sid Vicious from the Sex Pistols and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen; their self-destructive relationship was depicted in the film Sid and Nancy. Sid Vicious’ real name was John, however.

Rosanna Mangiarelli

We’ve seen celebrity mum Rosanna on the blog already; she’s the presenter of Channel 7’s current affairs show, Today Tonight. Out of all the mums interviewed, she seems the most conflicted about balancing career and motherhood, admitting to sobbing after dropping her daughter off at childcare. She only had 8 weeks maternity leave after having Emma, and is adamant that she needs more time off with the next baby.

She has Emma, aged 2 and a half, and as we know, she went on to have Olivia last month. Two Top 10 girls names that have been popular for a long time – both began rising in popularity during the 1970s and ’80s and were Top 20 by the 1990s. I get the feeling that Rosanna had these names picked out well in advance.

Niki Vasilakis

Niki is an award-winning concert violinist with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, was named Young South Australian of the Year in 2007, is Youth Patron of the Adelaide Festival Centre, and had her first baby around a year ago. Being a performer, she couldn’t afford to have a lot of time off to have a baby, and was back at work within three weeks: she did her normal music practice the day she gave birth.

It’s been very challenging and she has had to make a lot of sacrifices, but she credits her “amazing husband” and “big Greek family” for providing her with “unbelievable support”. Her big tip? Don’t wear a satin gown to perform in while breast feeding.

Niki’s baby daughter is named Amarie-Rose. Amarie is one of those modern names that are hard to say where they originated from; it looks like a contraction of Anne-Marie, and that’s usually how it is understood.

(Story and photo from Sunday Mail, November 5 2011; photo shows Amanda Blair with her four children)

Saturday Sibset: Hugh Jackman and Family

12 Saturday Nov 2011

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Hugh Jackman is an acclaimed actor of stage and screen, has won many awards, and been voted “Sexiest Man Alive” in popularity polls. He is often put forward as a shining example of the nice ordinary family man – the type who could be welcoming you to the neighbourhood by putting on a barbie and offering you free tickets to the footy, except he can’t because he happens to be a big movie star. While women vote him as their preferred choice of dream hunk, Australian men rate him as the celebrity who best embodies the spirit of the modern Aussie bloke.

Yet if things had gone just a little differently, Hugh Jackman might have been a dancer instead of an actor, and wouldn’t have been an Australian either. (I guess it’s still possible he might have been sexy though). Hugh’s parents were English emigrants, and he was only their second child to be born in Australia. His parents divorced when he was eight, and his mother returned to England, while he and his siblings remained in Sydney with their dad.

After a teacher praised his dancing skills and suggested he undergo professional training, he was all set to become a dancer, until his older brother told him that was for “poofs”. Hugh describes himself as the “ten minute Billy Elliot“, because this childish comment convinced him to drop the idea of dance study for fear of his manliness being eroded.

His brother apologised for his comment, and as soon as he did, Hugh enrolled in tap class – however, by that time he was already grown up, and it was sadly far too late for him to become a professional dancer. (Much later, he got to dance his heart out in the stage musical, The Boy From Oz, playing the role of, in some bizarre fulfilment of his brother’s taunt, the gay Australian composer, Peter Allen).

Hugh enjoyed drama so much at university that he ended up studying acting in Sydney and Perth, even though he considers himself to have been the “dunce of the class”. Yet his period of unemployment as an actor lasted exactly thirteen minutes, as he was offered a lead role in TV prison drama Corelli on the night of his graduation ceremony. Corelli was a huge flop, but Hugh met actress Deborra-Lee Furness on the show, and two years later they were married, in 1996.

Hugh personally designed Deborra-Lee’s engagement ring, and their wedding rings had the Sankrit inscription Om paramar mainamar, meaning “We dedicate our union to a higher source”. Hugh has been a member of The School of Practical Philosophy since his student days; this organisation teaches a blend of Eastern and Western thought and spirituality, and Hugh practices yoga and meditation.

Hugh’s acting career went from strength to strength, as he worked on stage, film and television. He became known outside Australia in 1998 when he played the lead role in Oklahoma! in London’s West End, earning an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. His Hollywood break came the following year, when he was offered the role of Wolverine in the X-Men movie. Deborra-Lee advised him not to take this role; she is now extremely glad that he ignored her suggestion.

Successful acting career? Check. Beautiful wife? Check. Happy marriage? Check. Meaning of life? Check. Everything was going brilliantly for Hugh and Deborra-Lee, except for their dreams of parenthood.

They had originally planned to have children naturally, and then adopt, but it turned out that they needed IVF, and then Deborra-Lee suffered two miscarriages. Hugh and Deborra-Lee tried to adopt, but found the process so fraught with difficulty that they moved to the United States in order to have children. Deborra-Lee is still very critical of how strict the adoption laws are in Australia.

They adopted a boy in 2000, who they named Oscar Maxmilian, and in 2005 adopted a girl who they named Ava Elliot. They had always planned on having a large family, but the reality of them both being busy and travelling a lot meant that it wasn’t practical. If you’ve ever taken a baby and a toddler on a plane, you would understand why the idea of adding several more kids to the mix didn’t seem like a good one – Hugh still remembers carrying a restless Oscar up and down the aisle of a plane “about 150 times“. He says the flight attendants thought it was sweet for the first 50 times. Oscar and Ava are both experienced travellers now.

Hugh says of being a father: “The love for your children is so powerful. It’s different from the love for your partner. You can’t believe you have that capacity – you’d do anything for them and not even think about it … Kids are the greatest joy. No matter what’s going on in the day, you can walk in that front door and it all goes away.”

Oscar and Ava are very popular names, and were already Top 100 in Hugh’s native New South Wales the years the children were adopted. There are lots of kids with these names, and I’m sure Hugh and Deborra-Lee chose them because they, like hundreds of other parents, just loved them.

However, I can’t helping feeling that they seem to have a Hollywood flavour to them. Is it just me, or does it seem peculiarly apt that a movie star would have a son named Oscar? Especially one who has hosted the Oscars? (Several years after Oscar was born). Ava of course is best known as the name of Hollywood screen legend Ava Gardner; I don’t know whether her middle name is in any way a nod towards the Billy Elliot that the young Hugh Jackman wished to be.

(Photo of the Jackman family visiting Disneyland from The Daily Telegraph, April 24 2009)

Saturday Sibset: Dave Hughes – Funny Man, Family Man

29 Saturday Oct 2011

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Dave Hughes, affectionately known as “Hughesy”, is a comedian who always seems to be described as “laconic”. “Laid-back” and “dry” are two other popular words used to describe his style of comedy. American audiences are, according to him anyway, fascinated by his broad accent, and US comedian Seth Rogen has said that he would turn gay for Hughesy (I presume he meant this in a light-hearted jocular sort of way, rather than a tortured confession of uncontrollable lust).

The odd thing is, Dave Hughes isn’t particularly laconic or laid-back – he has plenty to say for himself, and he admits to being an insecure teeth-grinder. According to his profile on Twitter, he has an addictive personality and will be checking for replies to his posts in an OCD-like way. In his act, he pretends to be lazy and careless, but is relentlessly ambitious. He portrays himself as an academic failure whose education consisted of being hit around the head by the Christian Brothers, but he was Dux of his school the year he graduated.

A man of contradictions, he is a teetotaller and doesn’t eat meat (except fish) for his health, but he hates vegetables, loves sugar, and (according to his Twitter posts) seems to be ill quite a lot. He meditates and reads self-help books, but still appears anxious and irritable. He appears on the customary left-wing comedy shows, but strikes me as a social conservative. Despite his working class rural background, ocker accent, and endless wardrobe of man-of-the-people shirts, he’s a multi-millionaire living a celebrity lifestyle.

A stand-up veteran, he has appeared on radio and television for many years. Currently he co-hosts the breakfast radio programme, Hughesy and Kate, with Kate Langbroek, on Nova 100. He is also co-host of Channel 10’s light entertainment current affairs TV show, The 7PM Project, with Charlie Pickering and Carrie Bickmore.

He married Holly Ife, a reporter with the Herald Sun, on New Year’s Eve 2006 at Flemington race track. Hughesy tends to portray his wife as both bossy and long-suffering. Dave and Holly have two children. Their son Rafferty David was born in April 2009, and their daughter Sadie May was born in April this year. (Dave got the giggles while she was being born).

Rafferty is “on trend” here, as names beginning with Raf-, such as Rafael and Rafi, are very much in vogue. It has a particular flavour in Australia, due to the old-fashioned slang, “Rafferty’s rules”, to describe a state of lawlessness. This was also the name of a police drama in the 1980s, starring popular actor, John Wood. More Australian-ness: Chips Rafferty was an iconic Australian movie star from the 1940s and 50s; and Rafferty’s Garden is a company which makes baby food.

Sadie is starting to become fashionable here, following recent North American trends. For many years it was in the no-go zone, thanks to Johnny Farnham’s hit single, Sadie the Cleaning Lady, but does now seem to considered more usable. The Canadian kid’s TV show, Naturally Sadie, has probably helped. Christina Applegate’s daughter, Sadie Grace, was born just three months before Sadie Hughes.

Keen-eyed starwatchers may have noticed a coincidence in the Hughes’ family names – English film star Jude Law has a son named Rafferty, and for several years was married to actress and designer Sadie Frost. I presume this was unintentional, rather than some sort of homage to Mr. Law.

Rafferty and Sadie are a sibset with strong Australian associations; the names are shabby-chic, and have already been road-tested by overseas celebrities. I can definitely see the names Rafferty and Sadie gaining in popularity in the next few years.

Dave discusses fatherhood on chat show, Rove, in 2009:

Saturday Sibsets: A New Generation of Daddos

22 Saturday Oct 2011

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Andrew Daddo has been on our TV screens … it seems like pretty much forever. (It’s only about a quarter of a century, but that is quite a chunk of my life, so it seems like a really long time). He started off as a teenager hosting music shows in the 1980s, and became the first Australian to head off to America and work on MTV.

As he got older, he settled into fronting up for the kind of programmes where they show the world’s craziest commercials, kids saying the darnedest things, charity events, Cannes Film Festivals and the funny side of the Olympics. He’s also been one of the more informative travel reporters we’ve seen on TV.

As Andrew has two brothers called Lachlan (younger) and Cameron (older), who also successfully appeared on television as actors, reporters and presenters, for a while it seemed that the entire Australian TV industry would have collapsed if you removed the Daddos from it.

Andrew has an identical twin brother Jamie, who was hit by a car in his teens while he was out celebrating grand final night. He suffered brain injuries, was in a coma for months, and has been in a motorised wheelchair since the accident. He gained his Master of Fine Arts from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and has worked as an artist for over twenty years, gaining acclaim for his sensitive portraits. He also writes poetry.

Andrew’s middle name is Dugald and Jamie’s is Beilby – names which filled them horror for years and made them decide their parents hated them from birth, until they found out they were actually family names with special meanings. Now they have grown accepting of them, and no longer pretend they were never given middle names.

Andrew is a successful author of children’s books, and writes for all ages, from preschool to teenager. He is still on television as the host of The One, a reality show contest which pits psychics against each other to see which one is most psychic. He also does the voice-over for The Apprentice.

Oddly enough for someone who’s made a successful career out of television, Andrew doesn’t really approve of it, and rarely allows his children to watch TV on school nights. He jokingly refers to himself as “half-Amish”.

The Daddos have been in the popular consciousness for so many years that if someone asked to visualise a typical Australian male in his 40s, I would probably picture someone who was a morph of all the Daddo brothers crossed with Hugh Jackman.

Despite their sensible Scottish first names, their surname is Cornish, and probably based on the name David, or possibly the word for “good” – yet more hard-working and successful Cornish stock in Australia to add to our list.

As we look at the children of the Daddo brothers, it’s tempting to wonder if they have produced a fresh crop of Daddos who will, in a few years perhaps, be gracing our television screens.

Andrew is married to Jacqui, and they have three children: Felix, aged 12; Anouk Bibi, aged 10; and Jasper; aged 7. I think this sibset is attractive, and the names sound great together. It sounds discreetly fashionable, yet not at all out of place for upmarket Sydney suburbia.

Lachlan or “Lochie” is married to Karina Brown, a model and TV host, and they have two daughters: Daisy Isabella, aged 6; and Gracie May, nearly 3. This is a cute, girly sibset that almost rhymes, and with their surname, sounds almost cartoon-like.

Cameron is married to model Alison Brahe. They have three children: Lotus, aged 15; River Tru, aged 11; and Bodhi Faith, aged 5 (a girl, a boy, and a girl). Cameron and Alison say they have always liked “unique and non-traditional” names; as they live in L.A., it’s hard not to think of this as a “hippie Hollywood” sibset. As often happens with these cool, unique names, they are already sounding slightly dated (as in, they sound like names that were unusual a few years ago, but now they’re fairly mainstream).

Jamie is only recently married, and doesn’t have any children, but of course all these kids are his nieces and nephews.

Saturday Sibset: Jacinta Tynan and Her Two Boys

15 Saturday Oct 2011

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Jacinta Tynan is a journalist and news presenter who works for Sky News Australia. She is the grand-niece of author John O’Grady, who wrote the best-selling comic classic, They’re a Weird Mob, under the name Nino Culotta; he made rather a career of explaining the Australian culture of his time, with satirical books such as Aussie English and Aussie Etiket.

Jacinta has two young sons: Jasper Jerome Pep, aged 2, and Otis Liam Francis, who was born just a few months ago in May.

Jacinta’s partner is property executive Liam Timms, and he has also managed to get himself on television, appearing on ABC’s science show Catalyst, in a special on the science behind fatherhood. Baby stories so often focus on the mother and neglect fathers that I do recommend clicking this link to watch the show, and if you can’t watch the video, you can read the transcript.

At the end of the show, we get to see Liam’s reactions as his son is being born, and nervousness soon turns to fear, because there are complications, and he is told Jacinta needs an emergency caesarean. While the other dads got to be at the birth of their children, poor Liam was left anxiously pacing the corridor.

In fact, Jasper’s entrance to the world was dramatic all round, because what the show doesn’t tell you is that Jacinta went into labour while she was reading the news! She was in labour for 48 hours, and the baby just refused to come out, until the caesarean was performed as a last resort. Jacinta had done a Calmbirth course, and was meditating throughout, so she coped extremely well. Even though Jasper had been through a gruelling ordeal being born, doctors were amazed at what a calm baby he was, which Jacinta attributes to her meditating twice daily during pregnancy.

On Catalyst, you get to see the end of Liam’s story – he is left alone with Jasper for two hours, and quite clearly falls in love with him at first sight. It was a very touching conclusion, because unlike the other dads, Liam was worried that he wouldn’t be able to summon the “right” emotions or bond with his son, and it just wasn’t a problem at all.

Jacinta was one of the mature-aged mothers who dashed off a huffy opinion piece in the wake of Dr Barry Walters telling her that she was “selfish” to have had her first child at 40, and her second at 41. She feels that she is now the best mother it is possible for her to be, having achieved most of her dreams, and is now ready to devote herself fully to her children.

You would think that Jacinta might have had some sympathy for Dr Walters being vilified in the press, as she too was subjected to much vitriol after publishing an article on how flipping easy parenting is. After being a parent for a whole 9 months, she decided she pretty much knew everything about it, and told us all motherhood was an absolute breeze and everyone should stop complaining about it.

I’m not sure why Jasper Jerome was named Jasper Jerome, but the name Pep is after the boat that Liam and Jacinta met on (Liam is a keen boatie, and according to the Catalyst show, seems to have bought a cradle to take the baby on the boat before anything else).

Otis Liam Francis appears to have been born very quietly, and without all the fanfare of his big brother. He is one of two celebrity babies named Otis this year, and has his dad’s name as one of his middles.

Jasper and Otis seem like a very “American-style” sibset to me, with a touch of the West about it, as well as a touch of Hollywood. It’s handsome, hipster, and old money made cool again.

Saturday Sibset: Brodie Holland’s Twin Boys

01 Saturday Oct 2011

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This week twins appeared to be in. Elisabeth at You Can’t Call It “It”! asked people to help name twin girls; should the parents choose the names they love most, or go for something less popular, and how could they honour family members in the process? Lou at Mer de Noms pondered why parents of boy-girl twin sets so often give a more mainstream name to the male twin. My midweek sibsets featured families with twins, including a woman who had given birth to three sets of twins during her life.

So it makes sense that today’s sibset should also be a family with twins, and as I’ve been a bit slack with the celebrity sibsets, it’s time to feature another famous Australian and their family.

Brodie Holland is a former AFL footballer who is best known for playing with the Collingwood Magpies. He retired in 2008, and now plays suburban football. He has taken part on Dancing with the Stars, where he made the final four, has appeared in advertisements, been a panellist on the AFL Footy Show, and made the obligatory cameo appearance in soap opera, Neighbours.

Brodie married Sarita Stella, a former model from game show, The Price is Right, in 2008, and in 2010 they had a daughter named Stevie.

In March, Sarita gave birth to their identical twin boys, Kip and Bowie, who were 10 weeks premature. Since that time, the boys have been in and out of hospital.

Kip was born with anaemia, and required open-heart surgery, and Bowie was at risk because he received too many red-blood cells while in the womb; this condition is called twin anaemia-polycythemia sequence (TAPS), and affects one-in-twenty identical twins who share the same placenta.

After a long stay in ICU, Kip had to be rushed back to hospital when he stopped breathing due to severe reflux. Later, both babies were admitted to hospital with bronchitis.

Clearly, it’s been a testing time for the Holland family; Brodie says he and Sarita are both positive thinkers by nature, but they couldn’t help but consider the possibility their sons might not make it. Their daughter Stevie was less than 11 months old when the twins were born, so they had three children under the age of one to take care of – just like Sam and Lyndall Mitchell, who also had twins in March with health complications, and a baby less than one year old.

Kip and Bowie are now doing well, putting on weight, and only require monthly check-ups. Brodie says that they feel very lucky, and even though the feeding and changing seems never-ending, he loves every minute of it.

Kip is a short form of Christopher, or any name beginning with Kip-, such as Kipling. Although the word kip is used to identify moves in sports such as dancing, gymnastics and trampolining, it’s most familiar as British slang meaning to have a little sleep (like nap, it is both a noun and a verb).

Bowie seems to be in honour of influential British pop star David Bowie, whose real name is David Jones. He chose his stage name from the 19th American frontiersman, Jim Bowie; Jim Bowie died at the Alamo, and gave his name to the Bowie hunting knife. You could also see Bowie as short for names such as Bowen, or a variant of Beau.

I think Kip and Bowie Holland is a very sprightly twin set – the cute perkiness of Kip makes a nice contrast to the star power of Bowie. I like the way each of the Holland children has a different vowel-sound in their name: short I in Kip, round O in Bowie, and long E in Stevie.

As Bowie is connected with singer David Bowie, and Stevie with singer Stevie Nicks, it does make you wonder if Kip is named after a popular singer from that era as well. I can only think of heavy metal vocalist, Kip Winger, or Kip Herring from punk band, The Vibrators, who don’t have quite the stature of either Bowie or Nicks.

(Story and photo from the Herald Sun, September 5 2011)