How Beyoncé And Jay-Z's Daughter Blue Ivy Got Her Unique Name

Since Beyoncé and Jay-Z welcomed their eldest child in January 2012, fans have wondered about the meaning behind Blue Ivy's name. When Beyoncé posted a Rebecca Solnit poem to her Tumblr in June 2012, the public believed it had concrete proof of the inspiration behind it. "The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel that whole distance from the sun to us," reads the poem from "A Field Guide to Getting Lost," in part.

Another hypothesis stemmed from another of Beyoncé's posts. In September 2011, a pregnant Beyoncé and Jay-Z visited the Hvar island in Croatia, where they came across a unique tree featuring bright blue streaks along its trunk. "We woke up this morning, took a nice little walk, passed by this beautiful blue tree," she said in the video. "I think it's a blue ivy, which would be quite appropriate." The speculation earned Blue Ivy an honorary Hvar citizenship, according to Glamour.

The honor came after interest in the island went up following the release of the video, which even convinced a city official that Blue Ivy's name was inspired by it. "The story of the origin of the name of your daughter has brought enormous media attention and therefore tourist promotion to the town and island of Hvar," Major Pjerino Bebic said. 

Despite the speculation, though, It turns out that Blue Ivy's name has a simpler explanation.

Blue Ivy was actually going to be named something completely different. "It was supposed to be Brooklyn," Jay-Z told CBS Mornings in October, a possible reference to the rapper's birthplace. But the nickname he and Beyoncé had for the tiny fetus they saw on the screen during checkups ended up becoming more than that. "We was calling her Blueberry. Like, 'Look at the little blueberry.' You know, it was like a nickname," he explained. "It just was natural."

The more they visited their blueberry, the more it stuck. "We just took the 'berry' off of it and called her Blue," he said. The inspiration behind the second half of his daughter's name is still unclear, though. A popular theory suggests it derives from the Roman numeral IV, as the number four seemingly has a special meaning for them. Beyoncé was born on September 4, while Jay-Z was born on December 4. Similarly, the couple tied the knot on April 4, 2008.

They even had IV tattooed on their ring finger (though Beyoncé has since altered hers to look more like a 4) and, in June 2011, Beyoncé released the album "4." In fact, Jay-Z's song "Glory" suggests Beyoncé fell pregnant during a trip to France to shoot the album's cover, potentially heightening the significance carried by the number. "You was made in Paris / And Mama woke up the next day and shot her album package," the lyrics read.

While the inspiration behind Blue Ivy's name was shrouded in secrecy until Jay-Z addressed it this year, he has been more open about the meaning behind his and Beyoncé's twins, Rumi and Sir. Two months after welcoming their second and third, the rapper noted their son, like his oldest sister, got his name organically. "Sir was like, man, come out the gate. He carries himself like that. He just came out, like, Sir," he said on the "Rap Radar" podcast in August 2017.

Beyoncé and Jay-Z spent considerably more time deciding on their daughter's name, drawing inspiration from literature. "Rumi is our favorite poet, so it was for our daughter," he explained, referring to the 13th-century Islamic scholar. Before Jay-Z confirmed speculation that Rumi was named after the Persian mystical poet, his mother-in-law, Tina Knowles, had already hinted at it. A month before her grandchildren's birth, Beyoncé's mother shared a few Rumi quotes on Instagram.

Beyoncé and Jay-Z's decision to address the speculation surrounding Rumi and Sir's names right away resulted from lessons learned after Blue Ivy. Beyoncé's desire for privacy during her first pregnancy backfired, to the point of sparking rumors she was faking it. "After the twins, I approached things very differently," she penned in her 2018 Vogue essay, speaking broadly about society's expectations. Beyoncé even shared intimate details about the birth, including her weight and medical complications that resulted in a difficult NICU stay.