Why Beyonce and Jay-Z Named Their Daughter 'Blue Ivy'

There's a time-honored tradition among celebrities in naming your child something totally weird. Of late, it seems as though the naming has become almost a competition to see who can come up with the strangest name (see: Apple).

When Beyonce and Jay-Z welcomed their baby daughter into the world yesterday and named her Blue Ivy, they landed just a bit short of the strangest names, but still managed to come up with something pretty unique. It was an odd enough name to confuse fans, many of whom thought the name was Ivy Blue, and not Blue Ivy.

So why is Babyonce named Blue Ivy? US Weekly claims that the Ivy part has to do with the number 4: Beyonce and Jay-Z were both born on the 4th (September for Beyonce, December for Jay-Z), were married on April 4th in 2008, and Beyonce's next album is titled "4." The roman numeral for 4 is IV, which lead to the choice for Ivy.

I guess calling her "Four" was just too on the nose.

As for the young'un's first name, Blue, the details are a little fuzzier. However, considering Jay-Z has the "Blueprint" series of albums and one of the kid's names already shares with Beyonce's next album title, chances are pretty good that's where they got the idea from.

So, there you go. Blue for Blueprint, Ivy for 4. And here you thought they were naming her after an oddly-colored wall-crawling plant.