Inspiration is a fickle thing. It rarely arrives when you need it to — surely Jack Torrance from The Shining (1980), who embodies the absolute horror of writer’s block, could attest to that — and when it finally does, you might not quite be sure where the idea came from. Did it spring from the mysterious depths of your imagination? Or might it have been planted there by someone else?
Well, it seems a Canadian radio host believes he planted a seed of inspiration in the mind of a very famous pop star — not for a lyric or a melody, but for… the name of her baby girl.
Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom just welcomed their first child together into the world. They announced her birth on Wednesday. They also announced that their daughter’s name is Daisy, like the flower. Actually, her full name is Daisy Dove Bloom, and it was a while before the couple managed to settle on it, apparently. “Katy won the battle over the baby’s name,” an anonymous source recently told US Weekly. She liked Daisy, but he liked Fiona, because he thought it would work well with his 9-year-old son Flynn’s name.
Obviously, they settled on Katy’s choice, but a radio host from Vancouver is playfully demanding credit for it. He interviewed her two months ago for the Z95.3 radio station and, as the subject of Perry’s pregnancy came up, so did the subject of naming the baby.
“I’m thinking maybe Daisy,” Matt Sutton says in the interview, as though he’s been thinking about this for a while, “Daisy Bloom. Come on. Like, that’s gotta be on the list somewhere.”
“That would be very beautiful,” Perry concedes. “Wait, how did you come up with that name?”
But Perry quickly deduces that Sutton gleaned the name from a song she released in May, a pop ballad called “Daisies,” which is the lead single from the singer’s sixth studio album — an album that, coincidentally, Perry delivered two days after she delivered Daisy.
“We’ve got some options,” Perry says. “But if that becomes her name… Winner, winner, chicken dinner!”
“I’ll take all the credit for that name,” Sutton promises.
“Yes,” she replies. “If that becomes her name, you can take all the credit.”
And so he did. “Is it too early to call me the Godfather…?” the radio host asked on Twitter.
As it turns out, though, Katy likes the name Daisy because daisies are her favourite flower, “pure and sunny” as they are. She’d also considered naming the baby after her late grandmother, whose name was Ann Pearl, but the couple decided on this one.
Daisy is Perry’s first child, and the couple announced her birth by sharing a black-and-white image of them holding the baby’s tiny hand — and Perry’s thumbnail is printed with a little daisy on it.
“We are floating with love and wonder from the safe and healthy arrival of our daughter,” they said in a statement released via Unicef, a charity for which both Perry and Bloom are ambassadors.
“We know we’re the lucky ones and not everyone can have a birthing experience as peaceful as ours was,” the statement continued. “Communities around the world are still experiencing a shortage of healthcare workers and every 11 seconds a pregnant woman or newborn dies, mostly from preventable causes.”
In honour of this, and to celebrate the arrival of their child, the couple decided to set up a donation page with Unicef, with the money going toward new mothers and their children.
“By supporting them, you are supporting a safe start to life and reimagining a healthier world for every child,” they said. “We hope your heart can bloom with generosity.”
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