Today, we otter off-pist
e, off-prompt, and a little bit off-the-cuff. For today is the birthday of a certain Nicola Sky Hawkins, and she needs an otter.
For inspiration, I have looked to ‘New Girl’ actress, the ultimate manic pixie girl herself – Zooey Deschanel. Not content with having her own bonkers name, last August she named her new-born daughter ‘Elsie Otter’. But I like that. I like that, when quizzed, she said her choice was based on otters being “playful and smart”. These are good qualities to wish for a daughter, and I salute her, just as I salute Sky.
Celebrity Baby Names
Celebrity parents, curb your whimsy
when burdening your child with names
they must struggle to fit, or else outrun.
The Apple may not fall far from the Paltrow,
she may yet fulfil all that glossy promise,
but fruit does go bad. Look at Peaches.
Better to slip in a middle name like a sixpence
under a pillow, a good fairy’s cribside blessing,
a seed that may be revealed to the light, but later,
at the needful point of greatest growth.
A Nicola could punk it up to high-kickin’ Nikki,
but what if her mum had tucked away a token
reading ‘Sky’? She could kiss it and unfold,
become a thousand times herself more blue
and beautiful when the storms tear through.
So this parting thought for tiny Elsie Deschanel,
one day loving the granny chic her name suggests,
but underneath coy necklines, playful and smart,
always knowing she is Otter at her heart.
Kirsten Luckins 