What to Know
Almost every mom who’s had a child has had to deal with some kind of criticism over their chosen baby name — no matter what name you pick out, there is going to be someone out there who doesn’t like it and who thinks you need to know that they don’t like it (for the record, you don’t).
Scarlett Johansson knows exactly what this feels like, and apparently, her mother-in-law even took to it to the extreme by suggesting a name change for her son after he was born.
Scarlett is a mom of two.
The Black Widow star welcomed her first baby, daughter Rose Dorothy, with ex-husband Romain Dauriac in 2014, while her son, Cosmo, arrived in
She kept Cosmo’s name a secret for as long as she could before his arrival, and during an appearance on Today with Jenna and Friends, she shared the reason why.
Her mother-in-law had an interesting reaction to her baby’s name.
While chatting with host Jenna Bush Hager about baby names, Scarlett admitted that she “didn’t want any of the weird face” that people give when they hear the name you picked out for your child and don’t like it. She added, “If you’re carrying, you’re like, ‘I’m not here for it.’ I don’t want any of your opinions.”
Fortunately, when the time came to share Cosmo’s name, her own mom was totally on board. “My mom loved it, which was like, ‘phew,'” she said. “She was like, ‘Oh my third grade crush was named Cosmo.’ It had a great meaning for her.”
But Colin’s mom? Not so much. “A few days after she goes, ‘Cosimo is a name I can find.’ That’s a recognizable name. I was like, ‘We’re not just gonna insert an ‘I,’ this is what it is,'” she said.
Good for Scarlett for standing her ground!
Colin has said that his mom wasn’t a fan of the name from the beginning.
Not long after Cosmo’s birth, Colin addressed his mom’s reaction to her new grandson’s name during an episode of Late Night With Seth Myers.
“My mom, I would say, was slightly thrown by it and didn’t quite understand it,” he said at the time. “I don’t know if she thought it was kind of like a hippie thing.”
According to Colin, this went on for several days, during which time she also suggested Cosimo as a name instead, which obviously did not work out too well for her in the end.
The good news? Scarlett and Colin named their baby the name they liked best, which is what matters… and now, four years later, certainly Grandma has gotten used to Cosmo. Right?
