Schoolyard Chants Of 'Rumer, Rumer, Big Hairy Tumor' Reveal Ugly Side Of Eccentric Celebrity Baby-Naming
As if second-generation Hollywood underdog Rumer Willis doesn't have enough to contend with living in the long shadows of her dazzlingly successful biological parents and a stepfather three years her junior, there's also those little life-obstacles thrown at her that could have just as easily been avoided. To wit: her name, one of the earliest and most egregious examples of the eccentric-celebrity-baby-naming trend that gripped the industry in the '90s and has yet to show any signs of letting up. We point as evidence towards such recent additions to the Weird Celebrity Baby-Name Registry as Sunday Kidman-Urban, Honor Alba-Warren, Birdie Phillipps (daughter of Freaks and Geeks star Busy), and the unabashedly onomatopoeic Phlbbbbbbfffft Simpson, the not-yet-born offspring of mother Ashlee. From Page Six:
RUMER Willis used to hate her name. The daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis tells this Sunday's Page Six Magazine that when she was 12, she realized she "got screwed."
My sisters, Scout and Talullah, had cute nicknames," she says. "When I was 12 and had crushes on guys, I'd put my first name with their last name, but it never sounded right. Rumer Depp? Nope. In school, kids would sing, 'Rumer, Rumer with a big hairy tumor.' " She also says she was shocked to be named one of People's 100 Most Beautiful People this year: "After being compared to Jay Leno for so long, you don't think of yourself in that way."
Let this be a cautionary tale to all you expecting celebrity parents. We realize children can be cruel, but really now: "Rumer, Rumer with a big hairy tumor?" And as if that weren't enough, Willis had to withstand comparisons to Jay Leno, the late night talk show equivalent of a benign, hirsute growth. Talullah didn't know how easy she had it, with a name almost impossible to rhyme with anything suitably humiliating. ("Talullah, Talullah, with all that Die Hard 2 Moolah!")