Naming a newborn baby is never an easy task. Do you go for something trendy? Traditional? Or maybe even make something up yourself?
Well, as you might expect, Steven Gerrard and his wife Alex appear to have taken their inspiration from the footballing world when it came to giving a moniker to their newborn son.
The former England ace took to Instagram this morning to announce the arrival, and revealed that the couple had named the lad after a footie legend.
But they didn’t choose a Liverpool player.
Instead, the boy was named Lio – almost certainly in honour of Barcelona and Argentina superstar Lionel Messi, widely regarded as the best player in the world.
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Gerrard told his 5.9 million Instagram followers: “Lio George Gerrard was born this morning at 4.55am. Both are doing great. Our family is complete.”
Little Lio is Steven and Alex’s fourth child; they already have three daughters – Lily-Ella, 13, Lexie, 10, and Lourdes, five. (We’re starting to detect a pattern here.)
And with Steven, 36, having retired from football last year, the family can now enjoy some quality time together.
After drawing a line under his Liverpool career in 2015, Steven enjoyed a final hurrah playing for LA Galaxy in American soccer league the MLS.
But there was never any chance of the Gerrards following in the footsteps of another former LA Galaxy star, David Beckham, by naming their new child after Steven’s shirt number.
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Writing in her column for OK! magazine in 2011, when she was pregnant with Lourdes, Alex said: “We’re not superstitious at all, so there isn’t any number that’s significant to us.
“But if Steven wanted to give his shirt number as a middle name to our new baby, I think I’d say no.”
And referring to the Beckhams’ daughter Harper Seven, the model – now 34 – said: “I must admit, I was expecting [them] to go a lot more girlie with their new baby’s name.”