Delany, a senior journalism student and freelance writer, pitched an article on potential West-Kardashian baby names shortly after Us Weekly reported the couple was expecting a boy. The resulting article, which ran on womensforum.com, suggested Saint as one of 10 possible names for the child.
And even though Delany had several names in mind, she said she was most sure of Saint — “so much so that, when he was named, I felt like I cheated,” she said.
Delany said womensforum.com doesn’t timestamp its articles, but she posted the article to her Facebook page as early as June 16 — nearly a week before Twitter user @KILLRudy predicted the name in a now-viral tweet.
While Saint West is Delany’s latest correct celebrity baby name prediction, it isn’t her first. In 2011, she won a contest on baby-naming website nameberry.com when she correctly predicted two parts of the name of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck’s second daughter, Seraphina Rose Elizabeth.
Since then, she’s also correctly guessed the names of Jessica Alba’s second daughter, Haven Warren, and Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts’s second son, Samuel Kai Schreiber.
She said she’s started texting predictions to her friends in advance in case she needs evidence later, and she’s had mixed reactions to her knack for predicting baby names.
“My dad is really proud of me — really oddly proud,” she said. “The people who I applied for jobs with think it’s cool. Other times, people don’t believe me and think I grabbed names from websites. I could do that, but I like to do my own research and find patterns.”
Delany, who’s interested in entertainment media, said she added her baby-naming history to her job résumé. She said the talent might have helped her land an internship at E! News in 2013.
She got her job at E! because of her answer to their last question, she said.
“They asked if I could name all of Angelina (Jolie) and Brad’s (Pitt) kids, and I named them in order with all their birth dates and places they were adopted from.”
Delany said her track record on predictions isn’t perfect, but even when she incorrectly guesses a name, she feels like she should have known the correct answer.
Her misses often come when a celebrity has a child for the first time, she said, like when she guessed “Lux” for Kim and Kanye’s first child, North.
And even though her predictions are fairly recent, she said she’s been fascinated by both celebrities and baby names for most of her life. She’s been able to remember celebrity baby names and birth dates since she was young, and she can remember where she was at the times of celebrity births, she said.
“And I realize this is really rude now, but when I was little, I used to give random pregnant people name suggestions,” she said.
She’s not particularly interested in the idea of having her own children, she said, but her friends already anticipate having her help in naming their kids.
The only time her talent has resulted in any material gain was in thenameberry.com contest win, with an award of several baby name books signed by writers Linda Rosenkrantz and Paula Redmond Satran, Delany said.
And as far as she knows, she said the knack doesn’t extend past celebrity baby names.
“Maybe one day something will happen and I’ll realize my powers go beyond (baby names),” she said. “But I do have confidence this will get me somewhere, because I have put a lot of time into it.”
As for the name Saint, Delany said she likes it — and thinks people tend to be too hard on celebrities for what they name their kids, anyway.
