The musician Kanye West and media personality Kim Kardashian have been slow in revealing the name of their new baby girl to the world -- but a report today indicates that they may have been inspired by a kommon letter.
Kaidence Donda West is the name of the new baby, according to Media Take Out, a reliable source for scurrilous gossip (the site claims to have been tipped by a Cedars-Sinai nurse). While first reports of baby names are often dubious -- just ask baby girls Amelie Jane and Isla Marcheline Jolie-Pitt -- Donda is a believable middle name. It's the name of West's late mother, whose premature death has inspired much of his latter-day work. And Kaidence isn't entirely preposterous -- it's not made up by reporters or by West and Kardashian.
According to Laura Wattenberg's "The Baby Name Wizard," the name "Cadence" took off in popularity after the 2003 film "American Wedding," in which January Jones played a love interest going by that name; the nation that made Kayden, Jayden and Brayden popular names took it from there. "Creative spellings move the name away from its musical roots into Kaitlyn territory." The name means what it sounds like -- a musical lilt, exactly the sort of thing that some critics argue is missing from West's punishing and atonal new album, "Yeezus."
A variant of the name peaked in popularity in 2009, when Kaydence was ranked No. 253 among all baby girl names. And it's evidently among the nouveau-sounding "K" names that Kardashian and her sisters Kourtney and Khloe helped popularize, if this Yahoo Answers page by a prospective mother trying to decide between Kaidence, Kyleigh, Khloe, Kinsleigh or Kiah is any indication.
In ruling out the rumors that the baby was to be named "North West," Kardashian had previously told Jay Leno: "We have a list and some of them are 'K' names and some of them aren't." Kaidence will fit right in.
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