New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday said her daughter would be called Neve, and expressed hope that one day a woman giving birth in office would no longer be a “novelty.”
Speaking publicly for the first time since giving birth on Thursday, Ardern said she and her partner, Clarke Gayford, had settled on the full name of Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford.
“We chose Neve because we just liked it, and when we met her we thought she looked like she suited the name,” the 37-year-old told reporters as she cradled her daughter in her arms.
Neve meant “bright and radiant and snow,” while Te Aroha was the name of a rural town where her family is from, she said.
“Hopefully, these things said in these moments now, I guess for want of a better word — novelty, they are still new — that one day they aren’t new anymore,” Ardern said. “And that it’s generally accepted, not just that women can make choices, but actually that men can too.
“So I hope for little girls and boys that actually there’s a future where they can make choices about how they raise their family and what kind of career they have that is just based on what they want and it makes them happy,” she said.
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