Stars Complex cipher: what the names of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s children mean

Rath Vibol is Angelina’s first child. While filming in Cambodia in 2001, she visited a refugee camp where she met a one-year-old orphan who stole her heart. The actress, who was married to Billy Bob Thornton at the time, adopted the boy, so the boy has an extra last name unlike his younger brothers and sisters. True, Billy Bob did not remain his father for very long, a year after the adoption, the couple divorced, and Angie was given sole custody.

After the exchange of documents, Rath became known as Maddox Shivan. The first name is of Welsh origin, meaning “fortunate” or “son of Madoc”, the famous Prince of Wales, a hero of folklore. And the name Shivan connects the boy to the Hindu world and dedicates his life to the god Shiva.

Jolie adopted a girl with big eyes from Ethiopia in 2005. The baby was only a few months old and at birth was given the name Yemsrach, common in her native country (but somewhat dissonant to the Russian ear). In one of the African dialects, it means “joy and happiness”.

Angelina chose a new name for her first daughter, Zahara. It means “shining flower” in Arabic. And the second name – Marley – the child was given in honor of the Jamaican musician, the father of reggae style Bob Marley, whose work and fate always touched her new mother very much.

The first joint child of Angelina and Brad was born in 2006. Then they were quietly happy together, and the appearance of the long-awaited child became a real dream come true: both of them had long been ready to become biological parents.

They chose a rare name of biblical origin for their daughter Jolipitta. Translating Shiloh from Hebrew is certainly not easy: it is one of the terms that signifies the omnipotence of God in all its breadth. The girl’s middle name, Nouvel, is borrowed from Jolie’s mother’s French, and means “new.”

Just a year later, Brad and Angelina adopted a three-year-old boy from Vietnam. His birth mother was addicted to heroin, and in his native Ho Chi Minh City, nothing good was expected of the child. The name he was given at birth, Pham Quanh Sang, is very common in Vietnam and means “magnificent”.

When the child became Jolie-Pitt, he was given a name consisting of two words in different languages: Pax is translated from Latin as “peaceful” and Tien from Vietnamese means “heaven”. Peaceful Heaven – why not?

In 2008, Angelina gave birth to opposite-sex twins. And again, together with her husband, she decided to encrypt important information for herself in their names. The girl Vivien Marcheline was given her middle name in honor of her maternal grandmother, Marcheline Bertrand. And her first name can be translated from French as “living”. Angela’s mother died a year earlier of cancer, so the actress honored her memory.

And little Viv’s brother, Knox Leon, was named symmetrically, as it turned out, because his name was given to his father’s family. Knox is the common middle name of Brad Pitt’s grandfather, who has Irish roots. The name Leon, “lion”, intelligible in many languages, is also written in the Irish way in the boy’s documents.

Of course, only Angelina knows and can explain the whole complex naming scheme of the six children (though she probably won’t). But it is clear that for her offspring, the actress chose options that emphasize the richness and diversity of genetic, spiritual and cultural ties within the family. We can only hope that Angie’s children will be as open to the world as their mother.