David Beckham outside the outside Ruber International Hospital in Madrid. Photograph: Reuters
When I heard on the radio this morning that David and Victoria Beckham were being pilloried in the Spanish and British press for the "mistake" of giving their newborn son, Cruz, a girl's name, I confess I was rather confused. And not just because I had somehow missed the news that Victoria was pregnant.
I grew up in southern California, and can remember Cruz being a perfectly acceptable name for a boy. In fact, I'd never heard of a girl being called Cruz.
I refer you to the US Social Security Administration, which keeps copious records of the most popular baby names going back a century. In the past 10 years, Cruz has crept up the rankings of the top 1,000 most popular names for boys, settling at 598 in 2003. It appears nowhere in the top 1,000 for girls.
So, while I cannot absolve the Beckhams of their alleged ignorance - who knows what they were thinking - I can say that if little Cruz's Spanish classmates give him too much of a hard time over his girly name, he can always emigrate to Los Angeles. Or indeed to Brooklyn.
