Kidman Urban Baby Name Inspired by Famous Australian Polyamorist

It's very interesting how celebrities past and present are coming out as or are being discovered to have been polyamorous. (See my post on Amelia Earhart and George Putnam.)

In Nashville on Monday academy award winning actress Nicole Kidman gave birth to a baby girl with her country music megastar husband Keith Urban by her side. They named the baby Sunday Rose Kidman Urban.

This week around the internet there has been a lot of curiosity and speculation about their inspiration for naming the baby Sunday. Apparently Nicole's father says he and his wife suggested the name. "There was a lady named Sunday Reed who was a prominent patron of the arts in Victoria [Australia]," Antony Kidman said. "The name Sunday struck me as being a nice name for a woman, so my wife and I mentioned it."

The patron of the arts in question was Sunday Reed (1905 - 1981). According to the website Gaywired.com, Reed and her husband, John (pictured here with their son, Sweeney), engaged in a long-term menage a trois with artist Sidney Nolan, who came to regard Sunday Reed as his muse. Reed and her husband were also rumored to have had open affairs outside of their marriage with a variety of people.

I found the following quote on another website from a letter from John Reed to Nolan: "Within a year you came to live at Heide, your life and ours were inextricably interwoven in a pattern of complete mutuality and intimacy. Each made his own contribution to the life we all led together, and your paintings were part of your contribution, even though you said Sunday painted them as much as you did."

I'm sure Keith and Nicole didn't choose to name their daughter Sunday because of the poly aspect of her namesake, but it still pleases me enormously to find that yet another public figure of the past led a life not all that much different than my own. I am also a huge fan of (and yes, lust after) both Nicole and Keith. I saw him perform in concert in Baltimore in March, and he is an amazing guitarist and performer. I would have loved to have seen them together there but apparently Nic, as he calls her, wasn't present, though he did dedicate a song to her and said how happy he was to know he was to be a dad. Someone in the audience gave him a Baltimore Ravens onesie, a one piece outfit for babies, and he hung it on his microphone stand for the rest of the concert. I find the obvious love they share to be quite touching, and I'm so glad she found real happiness after having such a heartbreaking experience with the too-arrogant-for-his-own-good Tom Cruise. And it doesn't hurt that they have a home in and their baby was born in Tennessee where I grew up.