Ordinary Gweilo

You may have read that Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband Chris Martin have decided to call their new baby Apple Blythe Alison Martin. This has caused quite a lot of comment in various newspapers (in the UK, at least).

The name Apple is a little unusual, but there’s nothing particularly odd about it, and they certainly aren’t going to outdo Paul Yates with names like that! Blythe and Alison are the names of the baby’s two grandmothers, incidentally.

The reason this story caught my attention was that there actually two Apples in the office where I work. Yes, people, not fruit or newspapers, before you ask. Where Hong Kong leads, international showbiz stars follow.

Update: The Sun has picked up on this story and packed in as many fruit puns as possible. They have also found a lady called Apple Chua, who says that “she suffered vicious playground teasing in Tooting, South London” because of her name. In spite of having what sounds like a Chinese name, they claim that she is “originally from Thailand, where the name is common”. I’ll have to bow to the superior knowledge of certain other HK bloggers, who will probably know whether this is true or not.