Australians Matt Welsh and Lauren Newton welcome son Sam Albert Newton

Australian Olympic swimmer Matt Welsh, 31, and his wife, television personality Lauren Newton, 28, welcomed their first child, son Sam Albert Newton Welsh on Saturday, January 19th in Melbourne, Australia.  He weighed 6 pounds, 8 ounces and was born three weeks early. 

Lauren is a celebrity baby in her own right and Sam’s middle name pays homage to her father; she is the daughter of television personality Bert Newton. The new granddad couldn’t hide his excitement when telling the news outlets,

Lauren is beautiful, Matt is as handsome as ever and Sam is the star of the family.

Source: The Age and Herald Sun

Thanks to CBB readers Tracey and Rachel.

Comments

Let’s hope Sam takes after his Dad and not Grandpa (affectionately refered to as Moonface)!

I’m actually a little surprisd the baby is a Newton and not a Welsh. Lauren always seemed very traditional even although she didn’t change her name when she married. Interesting. I’m in a similar situation myself – still trying to decide whether to hyphenate, give up my maiden name or convert to married name. My very modern husband could care less what I chose, ditto for if our children take his name or mine. It’d probably be easier to decide if he felt strongly in one way or the other!

Sarah’s note: It is Welsh — Newton is his second middle name. We only include the last name if it’s somehow different than just the father’s — like David Alan Grier’s new baby is Grier-Kim, so we included that. We had people complain that it’s repetitive to list out the whole name. I do think it can be a bit confusing with names like this though!

- Lilybett on January 21st, 2008

That’s a confusing policy. It’s also not a good thing to train people to automatically mentally add the father’s surname on to the end of every baby’s name even if that baby’s name looks complete. Sam Albert Newton definitely does look complete and I came to the comments section to praise the new parents for being so egalitarian.

Children sometimes receive the mother’s surname (yes, even if the parents are married) and it’s frustrating to, for instance, tell someone, “the baby’s name is John Andrew Doe” and have people assume that it’s really John Andrew Doe Smith. This new policy on such a popular page just makes it worse.

Anyway, it’s kind of nice to see a new baby’s full name in print for the first time

Sarah’s note: I agree that can be confusing. On the introduction post for the first photo of babies, we do list the full name in the title. Including the entire name in the birth post is something we’ll definitely discuss with the staff — just in the past due to complaints about repetitiveness we have definitely shied away from it. If readers are finding it more confusing then helpful though, it’s definitely something to think about. I’ll add it to this post.

- Lara on January 22nd, 2008