Sibset of the Week: The Frosts

It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these posts, isn’t it? Nevermind, but today’s mother is a former Eurovision competitor turned TV presenter.

As part of group Precious, Jenny Frost represented the UK in Eurovision in 1999, where they placed a respectable 12th place. Following this and the group’s later split, she went on to join Atomic Kitten following the departure of Kerry Katona in 2001. Atomic Kitten went on to split in 2004, following the release of their third studio album. However, Atomic Kitten did reform in 2005, and again in 2008.

The group then reformed once more in 2012 to take part in the ITV show The Big Reunion, joined by several other chart-topping acts from the late-90s and early-00s. However, Jenny Frost did not join the line up due to being pregnant and thus Kerry Katona took her place.

Jenny Frost has three children, a son born when she was with former fiancé Dominic Thrupp, followed by a set of twins this year with current husband Vicente Juan Spiteri.

Their names?

Casper (2007)

Nico (2013)

Blake (2013)

A decent enough group of names, you might think, but the catch is that the set of twins are fraternal girls, something that caused quite a bit of commentary back in January 2013 when their names were announced. It’s following in the footsteps of the likes of Jessica Simpson when it comes to using established male names on girls, and rather reminds me of Lisa Marie Presley who welcomed twin girls with the names Harper and Finley back in 2008 (noting that one of Finley’s middle names is Aaron).

Of course, this isn’t the first use of Nico as a female name by a celebrity, given that Thandie Newton notably has a daughter with the name, born in 2004 – with her sister born in 2000 being called Ripley.

This rather does pose the question, if you were told the above sibset consisted of two girls and one lad, who would you think is the lad? I’d most certainly be tempted to say Blake, as opposed to Casper.

Sibset of the Week: Coldplay

Snapped by me at the closing ceremony, during the song ‘Yellow’

I’m slightly upset that my time as a GamesMaker has come to an end, but I suspect some of you may be secretly glad because I now have time to devote to blogging once more.

Last night was the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games, and by a stroke of insane luck I managed to get deployed to the seating area above the two giant plasmas in the north stand. You see, for deployment yesterday we simply picked out of a hat to ensure everyone had an equal chance of getting a shift inside the stadium. One of my friends sadly got ticketing and since they were being pretty strict about loitering last night, she saw 10 minutes at the most of the action, whilst I got to stand in the stadium watching.

The main act of the closing ceremony was Coldplay, who played pretty much all of their big hits.

Coldplay is a four-piece band, and all four members have children.

Let’s start with Mr. Drummer, Will Champion. He is married to a lady named Marianne and they have three children, including fraternal twins:

Ava

Juno

Rex

Then we have Mr. Bassist, Guy Berryman. He only has one child, a daughter, with former wife Joanna:

Nico

Next we have Mr. Guitarist, Jonny Buckland. He has a son and a daughter with wife Chloe:

Violet

Jonah

Finally, need I mention the children of Mr. Lead Singer etc. ? Chris Martin is famously married to Gwyneth Paltrow, and the names of their children are particularly well known:

Apple Blythe Alison

Moses Bruce Anthony

Name Spot of the Week: New to F1

New McLaren for 2012, from theweek.co.uk

This week has whooshed by for me, so it seems apt to focus on a sport know for it’s quick pace. It’s about a month now until Formula 1 kicks off the 2012 season, and I’m itching to see whether broadcaster Sky will live up to expectations as it takes over the UK coverage. If you’re outside of the UK, you may not be aware that Bernie Ecclestone sold the TV rights to Sky starting this season – which is a subscription service. This made it quite the controversial deal, given that F1 is on the list of sports which must be available to watch for free, thus on one of the channels available through Freeview. Technically, they’re sharing the coverage with the BBC, but there’s been a mini storm amongst fans here.

But, in the off season there have been a few changes to the driver line-up. Notably, three French drivers have race-seats, after literally no French drivers in the 2011 season.

Charles Pic (Marussia) (FRA)

Jean-Éric Verge (Toro Rosso) (FRA)

Kimi Räikkönen (Lotus) (FIN)

Narain Karthikeyan (HRT) (IND)

Nico Hülkenberg (Force India) (GER)

Pedro de la Rose (HRT) (ESP)

Romain Grosjean (Lotus) (FRA)

I’ve been watching quite a bit of news this week, and one name that really caught my attention was Nikel. Half Nico, half Michael and rather appealing to the chemist in me. The reporter didn’t pronounce the name like nickel, though, more like Michael with an N. Another interesting thing to note from watching the news is that of mother and daughters having matchy names. We mentioned an Amelia with daughters Ame and Lia a few weeks ago, and I’ve recently seen a mother called Mollie with a daughter named Millie.

20 ‘O’ Names

Currently, a trendy suffix is ‘o’, so in this post I present to you some lovely ‘o’ boys names, some of which you may have heard of, others you won’t.

Amadeo

– Italian meaning lover of God.

Aurelio

– Italian variation of Aurelius, meaning Golden One.

Bruno

– German name meaning brown. Popular throughout Europe, currently #861 in the US.

Claudio

– Italian from Latin meaning lame. Featured in two Shakespeare plays, Much Ado About Nothing and Measure For Measure.

Cosmo

– Greek name meaning universe. The youth of today will likely associate the name with the ditzy, yet lovable character from Fairly Odd Parents.

Diego

– Spanish variaton of James, currently enjoying some popularity, placing it at #75. Dora the Explorer’s cousin is a bearer.

Hugo

– English parents will likely associate this name with bumbling Hugo from cult comedy show Vicar of Dibley. It’s a German name meaning mind, intellect, and currently sits at #409.

Indio

– Not only benefitting form the ‘o’ trend, but also the name trend of place names. Indio is the name of a Californian desert town.

Ivo

– German name meaning yew wood, archer. This is a more energetic name than Ivor.

Jethro

– Hebrew name meaning preeminence. It was also the name of Moses’ father-in-law.

Leo

– This name has Latin origins and means lion. Currently #209.

Mateo

– Spanish variation of Matthew that means gift of God. #229.

Milo

– German name meaning mind, peaceful, calm. #451.

Navarro

– Spanish name meaning from Navarre. It’s also a  surname in the Basque Kingdom, helping it appeal the surname trend as well as the place name one.

Nico

– Greek name, can either stand alone or be a nickname for a Nico- name, such as Nicolo, Nicodemus or maybe even Nicholas. Thus, this name’s popularity could be helped along be appealing the the nickname trend. #585.

Orlando

– Italian version of Roland, and means famous throughout the land. British actor Orlando Bloom shows this name isn’t necessarily for Italians only. Used by Shakespeare, and is currently # 410.

Pablo

– Spanish variation of Paul. Artist Picasso was a famous bearer. #344.

Pedro

– Spanish variation of Peter, and currently not far behind in popularity at #268 (Peter is at #191)

Reno

– Not only a cute moniker, but also the name of a town associated with gambling. That never stopped place names such as Rio, though.

Taddeo

– Charming Italian version of Thaddeus. Personally, this version looks to have more youth than the first.