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Jenna Bush Hager’s mom Laura Bush had early doubts about her granddaughter’s name.
The 44-year-old host of “TODAY with Jenna & Friends” opened up about the baby name advice her mom — former First Lady and wife of George W. Bush — gave her after giving birth to her first child in 2013.
And the advice left both Bush Hager and her co-host Scarlett Johansson befuddled.
“Our eldest daughter is named Mila, which is like a perfectly popular name,” she told Johansson on the Dec. 4 episode of her show — who agreed that there are “lots of Milas” in the world today.
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But Laura Bush had one small issue with the name — more specifically, the spelling of it.
“Afterwards, my mom called and said, “Now, in Texas, they’re calling her MY-luh,” Bush Hager said — as opposed to the actual pronunciation, ME-luh.
Johansson then asked what her mom expected her to do about it.
“You know, Lela is L-E-L-A, maybe you change it to M-E-L-A,” Bush Hager recalled of her mom’s advice.
“I’m like, ‘You want me to change the spelling of my child’s name because, in Texas, they’re mispronouncing her name as MY-luh?’” she added.
Johansson wasn’t convinced that changing the spelling would help the cause — and Bush Hager agreed.
“She’s now 12, so when we named her maybe Mila wasn’t quite so popular,” Bush Hager added before defending her spelling choice. “So, let’s just let her be. Let her be…”
Jenna Bush Hager’s daughter Mila, whose full name is Margaret Laura “Mila” Hager, was born on April 13, 2013, according to TODAY.
The “Today” show host also shares daughter Poppy Louise, born Aug. 13, 2015, and son Henry Harold “Hal,” born Aug. 2, 2019, with her husband Henry Chase Hager.
Jenna Bush Hager’s children all have family-inspired names
It makes sense that Laura Bush would be so invested in her granddaughter’s name — after all, she was the inspiration behind Mila’s middle name.
Plus, Bush Hager had a point with the popularity of Mila’s name.
According to the Social Security Administration, Mila didn’t enter the SSA’s top 1,000 most popular girl names until 2006 and spiked in popularity in 2010 before cracking the top-100 in 2013.
Mila peaked at No. 14 in 2018 and most recently ranked 33rd in 2024, per the SSA.
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But Mila isn’t the only one who was given a name with ties to the Bush family.
Bush Hager’s second daughter, Poppy, was named after the talk show host’s grandfather — former President George H.W. Bush.
“Welcome to the WORLD Poppy Louise Hager — named after my darling Gamps who went by Poppy during his childhood. We are in LOVE,” Bush Hager wrote in a 2015 Instagram post.
Like Mila, Poppy’s birth coincided with a rise in popularity among baby girls with the same name.
According to the SSA, Poppy didn’t enter the top 1,000 until 2016 — the year after she was born. It has now been a top-500 girl’s name every year since 2019.
And while her son Henry shares a first name with his father, his middle name (Harold) was inspired by Jenna Bush Hager’s other grandfather — Harold Welch, the father of Laura Bush.
Henry was a top-10 boy’s name in the early 1900s before falling out of the top-100 between 1970 and 2005. It re-entered the top-100 in 2006.
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Henry has now been a top-10 boy’s name every year since 2020 — the year after Bush Hager’s son was born.
