Kate Winslet explains her son's name, Bear Blaze, on 'Ellen' - Los Angeles Times
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Kate Winslet explains her son’s name, Bear Blaze, on ‘Ellen’

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Kate Winslet is finally explaining her son’s unusual baby name: Bear Blaze Winslet, whom she welcomed in December 2013.

The “Divergent” star was appearing on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” to plug the film when the host brought up her 14-week-old’s unusual moniker. It turns out the name was selected by Winslet’s other children, Mia, 13, and Joe, 10, whom she had from her previous marriages to director Sam Mendes and Jim Threapleton.

“We were thinking about names during the pregnancy and actually I had never -- when I was pregnant with Mia, when I was pregnant with Joe -- I didn’t name them before they came out because I always felt like I had to see them and see who they’re going to be,” the Oscar-winning actress told DeGeneres in an interview airing Tuesday. “Of course this time around, there’s Mia and Joe and the whole pregnancy is about what are we going to call the baby.”

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The 38-year-old said it was lovely to include her older children in the naming process.

“We settled on Bear quite early on,” Winslet said. “A friend of mine when I was younger was nicknamed Bear, and I just had always really loved it and he was very much a bear -- he was everyone’s shoulder to cry on, he was a big bear hug, he was just this great figure in my life -- and I just always remembered him and that’s where it came from.”

As for Bear’s middle name, Blaze, that comes from the fact that Winslet met her third husband and Bear’s dad, Ned Rocknroll, after a fire.

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“And then Bear’s second name is Blaze because my husband and I met in a house fire basically ... and the house burned down and we survived. But we wanted something of the fire,” she said.

Winslet wed Rocknroll, the nephew of Virgin honcho Richard Branson, in December 2012. Rocknroll, who legally changed his name from Abel Smith in 2008 prior to meeting Winslet, reportedly met her in 2011 when the actress was vacationing on Branson’s Necker Island (a private paradise in the British Virgin Islands).

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As the story goes, lightning set the island’s main house ablaze, making a hero of the English actress for evacuating Branson’s 90-year-old mother, Eve.

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Controversially, Winslet, who’s been married twice before, decided to give her son her own last name rather than Rocknroll. When Degeneres asked why, Winslet replied: “Why do you think, Ellen?”

“So you wouldn’t have encouraged [Ned] to change it to Rocknroll is what you’re saying.”

In other Winslet news, the “Titanic” actress was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Monday.

“I am completely overwhelmed by the number of people that there are here today,” she said (via CBS News). I honestly had no idea that this was going to be quite such a well-attended event, especially after the earthquake this morning -- which frightened me quite a lot actually, I made for a door frame with my breast pump in my hand.

“I feel very honored, 20 years into my own career, to be standing in such a poignant place, and being celebrated in such a spectacular fashion. Thank you very much for my star, and thank you very much for having me,” Winslet added.

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Follow Ministry of Gossip @LATcelebs.

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