With stand-out names like Peta and Maksim, it was unlikely that Dancing with the Stars' little lovebirds were going to have a baby and name it, like, Joe.
Sure enough, engaged dance pros Peta Murgatroyd and Maksim Chmerkovskiy gave their son a moniker as unique as their own. Shai Aleksander was born January 4, and now his mama is giving fans the inside scoop on what inspired his name.
"First of all, naming a baby — who will one day be an adult out in the world — is hard," Murgatroyd wrote on her All Things Fam & Glam blog. "It took months and months to find a name that Maks and I both loved and kind of embodied what he means to us. We knew that we wanted a shorter name that wasn't super-complicated because 'Chmerkovskiy' is kind of a mouthful and he'll always have to spell it out for people. We finally settled on Shai, pronounced 'shy' and means 'gift' in Hebrew. Honestly, it's a perfect fit because from the very beginning we felt like this little life we made was the most precious gift God could grant us."
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She added that Chmerkovskiy chose the middle name, Aleksander, as a tribute to his own father, Aleksandr. Murgatroyd noted that they altered the name's spelling to "make it unique to [Shai]."
Little Shai already has a family nickname, she continued.
"In Russian culture they have this really cute way of adding '-chka' to the end of names as a term of endearment," she explained. "Like, when I joined the Chmerkovskiy family, they gave me the name 'Peta-chka.' So, within the family, we've taken to calling him 'Shai-chka.'"
Too cute. Also, can all celebrities please start supplying baby name explanations?