When Jenna Bush Hager welcomed her first child in 2013, she chose a name she loved for her newborn daughter: Mila.
The excitement of the moment had barely settled in when the phone rang. On the other end was Jenna's mother, former First Lady Laura Bush.
On the Dec. 4 taping of Jenna & Friends, Jenna recalled to guest host Scarlett Johansson how her mom explained that folks in Texas were already stumbling over the pronunciation, stretching the simple Mila into a drawn-out “My-la.”
"What did she want you to do about that?" Johansson asked.
Well, according to Jenna, her mother pointed out that names like Lela are spelled the way they sound, and suggested that Mila could be adjusted to M-E-L-A in a similar fashion to avoid confusion.
“I was like, you want me to change the spelling my child’s name because in Texas they’re mispronouncing her name as My-la?," Jenna said, laughing.
"Do you think that would be helpful?" Johansson teased, lifting an eyebrow. "I haven't seen that spelling."
"I haven't either," Jenna replied.
Mila, whose legal name is actually Margaret, was born in 2013, when the name ranked 78th on the Social Security Administration’s list of most popular baby names. It has climbed steadily since then and now sits at No. 33. (For the record, Mela does not appear in the top 1,000 baby names!)
Jenna noted that there weren’t nearly as many Mila’s when her daughter was born, so with the name’s rise in popularity, she hopes Texas has finally sorted out the pronunciation.
Jenna and her husband, Henry Hager, are also parents of 10-year-old daughter, Poppy, and 7-year-old son, Hal.
Mila is named for her grandmothers, while Poppy is a tribute to Jenna’s grandfather, the late George H.W Bush, whose childhood nickname was Poppy. Their youngest, Henry “Hal,” inherited his name from his father.
