Which celebrity child is Croatia going to help name next?

A spiky cactus on Hvar – which celebrity couple will this influence?!

All throughout yesterday, Twitter and Google News seem to have been clogged up with one story alone. No, not the goings on at Wimbledon, or the super-exciting news on the re-unification of the Spice Girls. It was that the most famous child in the world, Blue Ivy, had been made an “honorary citizen” of the town of Hvar. That’s all anyone was talking about online yesterday, it seemed!

News that the offspring of Beyonce and Jay-Z (but of course, I definitely didn’t need to tell you that!) had had this honour bestowed on her made the rounds on distinguished online news sites such as Huffington Post, The Telegraph and even Time, as well as the far-less distinguished heatworld, a million and one US gossip sites and (ahem) The Mirror and The Sun. The Christian Post even got so excited that they decided she’d been given honorary citizenship of Croatia. All of these reports and articles seemed to stem from a report in Dalmacija News that appeared at the end of last week.

It was the mayor of the beautiful Hvar Town who proclaimed that Blue Ivy has been granted this special type of “citizenship” of the town. Mayor Pjerino Bebic cleverly “wrote a letter” (that has somehow made its way into the public sphere) to Mr & Mrs Jay-Z stating that because of the story behind their child’s name (supposedly because the couple stumbled across a tree they liked in/near Hvar Town), and the increase in media attention of Hvar that that has brought as well as helping promote the town and island, he has decided to reward little Blue Ivy with this special honour.

If you watch the video of Beyonce (perhaps best viewed at MTV.com) where she’s apparently discovered the very bit of nature that will give her future child its name, I can’t help but think…”That? That thing?! That just looks like a tree that’s been painted blue! Where’s the ivy bit of it?!” (And is there even such a thing as ivy that’s blue?)

More to the point, exactly how has the news evolved that this most famous of celebrity offspring got her name from a tree in Croatia? If you watch the pregnant-Beyonce-standing-by-tree video, you’ll notice she introduces the tree (“Hi tree – meet my millions of fans”…or words to that effect) and then concludes by saying “I think it’s blue ivy, which would be quite appropriate”. This, to me, indicates that a decision on their child’s name was made way before any visit to the island or even meeting this particular tree.

But I’m probably being a party pooper by saying the above, aren’t I? So ignore all of that – Beyonce and Jay-Z definitely named their child after a tree on Hvar, Croatia!

I’m not well-versed on the next super-famous celeb sprog to be born, but who knows where this will lead? Maybe Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes will take a trip to Hvar sometime this summer (we’d highly recommend it, Tom and Katie) and taking inspiration (and some romance) from the island, they’ll have their second child sometime next year, naming it Spiky Cactus Cruise after a bit of nature that they stumbled across on Hvar.

…it could happen.