Atlanta mom names baby after Obama

They call him The Little President, all 7 pounds, 2 ounces of him. Just like President-elect Barack Obama, he made a big impression on the world on Nov. 4. At 4:16 p.m., as after-work voters started to line up, Pierre Obama Adell Willis was born at Grady Hospital.

Even if Obama hadn’t won the election, The Little President’s mother, Atlantan Kimberly Wise, was firm in her choice. She had a scheduled caesarean section and knew her child would come into the world on Election Day, preventing her from going to the polls, she says.

“I had good faith he was going to win,” says Wise, 23. “I had already decided. He was going to be Obama.”

News reports from around the United States and Kenya, where Obama’s father was born, say many newborns are getting names like Barack and Obama, or the names of his wife and daughters: Michelle, Malia and Sasha.

It’s unusual for a presidential name to be picked up so quickly, and for his family member’s names to become popular, too, says Linda Rosenkrantz, who has co-authored nine baby name books, along with the Web site nameberry.com.

Trendy names don’t stay that way for long, Rosenkrantz says, but “Barack” and “Obama” — names that even the President elect and his wife joked about — have never before been popular. Because they are unusual they will have a more lasting presidential tie, she predicts, than the Kennedys, Tylers, Taylors and Madisons running around nursery schools now.

“Usually when a president becomes a namesake, it’s after he’s accomplished a great deal,” Rosenkrantz says. “I think it’s just the beginning. He’s just such a superhero to so many, many people.”

Kimberly Wise thinks so. She wept twice on Nov. 4: first, when her son was born, and again around 11 p.m., when her boyfriend, Paul Willis, called.

“Baby, we did it,” he told her. “We made history.”

“He came up there and we were just holding the baby and crying, talking about the future,” Wise recalls now, while she recovers at her father’s home in northwest Atlanta.

She wants their future to include a Christmas celebration for her new baby and her 2-year-old son, Damioen White, a better paying job than the one she had at McDonald’s and a comfortable place for her family to live.

She expects the soon-to-be president to help the economy, but says the rest of the country — including herself, her family and The Little President — will have even more work to do.

“I’m hoping [Obama] is going to bring everybody together, no matter what race they are, no matter what size, shape, form,” Wise says. “He can’t do it by himself. We’ve all got to come together.”