Analyzing Harper Seven Beckham's Name

Celebrity baby names are getting weirder and weirder. Gone are the days when the children of Hollywood actors and rock stars received names like…well, more like their own. It may be that Bob and Janet and Steve aren’t flashy enough to exude the fame and stardom of parents like Gwyneth Paltrow and Jessica Alba. Paltrow named her daughter after a fruit (Apple), while Alba named her daughter after a character trait (Honor). Now David and Victoria Beckham can be added to the list of celebrities giving their babies unique names. They have dubbed their newborn daughter nothing other than Harper Seven.

Regular folk may wonder why the Beckhams, apparently both rather intelligent and sane human beings, have made such a bizarre choice. Well, the truth is, when you look at the explanation behind Harper Seven, it seems a lot less strange.

First off, it should be noted that the full name — Harper Seven Beckham — isn’t as ridiculous as some other celebrity baby names out there, and it does have an oddly nice ring to it. David and Victoria, who have named their previous children Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz, reportedly decided to name their first daughter Harper Seven after a famous author and David’s old jersey number. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), whose full name is actually Nelle Harper Lee, is just one of a handful of famous people with the name Harper, which is quite common as a surname but less so as a given name. As it turns out, other celebrities of late have also named their children Harper, including Neil Patrick Harris, Tiffani Thiessen and Lisa Marie Presley, so it’s not too uncommon of a name in celebrity circles.

It’s understandable to name your child after a famous author, artist or activist. Perhaps it's just a good name, or you want the child to inherit a great legacy and hopefully accomplish things later on in life, or maybe you just want your child to stand out in a crowd of ordinary names. That’s all fine. What seems perplexing, though, is naming your child after a jersey. Seriously, it’s a jersey. It’s not a person. It doesn’t have any personality. It hasn’t done anything with its life, because it doesn’t have a life. It’s just a jersey. So why would David and Victoria Beckham name their child partly after a jersey? Is there more to this story than they're telling us?

As it turns out, yes. Although seven is the number of David’s old jersey when he played for Manchester United, the number seven has an even deeper, and very coincidental, meaning. Baby Harper Seven was born on Sunday, the seventh day of the week, in the seventh hour of the day, in the seventh month of the year, and weighed seven pounds (plus ten ounces). It all makes for a very interesting story just how often the number seven has appeared in this newborn's life — and in her family's.

So there you have it: Harper Seven may seem like just another crazy celebrity baby name, when in fact it's got some solid thinking behind it — a unique name for a special little girl.