In April this year, Hollywood power couple Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling welcomed their second child, a daughter named Amada Lee.
The pair were already parents to Esmeralda Amada, who is just under two years old, and as Eva reveals in a new interview with Latina magazine, there's a good reason that the sisters share a name.
'My grandmother’s name is Amada, and Esmeralda Amada is the name of our oldest,' explains the actress, who kept both of her pregnancies out of the public eye. 'We had a few names picked out for our new baby, and when she was born, we didn't feel like those names were her. We came up with a few more, even that morning, and tried them out. We were like, "What about Viviana?" But we just kept going back to Amada.'
The actress also joked that in Latin culture, it's not uncommon for siblings to share a name. 'In true Latin fashion, we reuse names all the time. I used to know five sisters that were all Maria del Carmen, Maria Elena, Maria Liliana,' she told the magazine. 'I actually told [Ryan], "This is common in Latin culture, so it wouldn't be crazy..."'
Amada Lee was born just 12 days after the death of Eva's older brother Carlos. Describing the emotional impact for the first time, Mendes said 'Losing my brother brought our family closer, and we were already close to begin with. So to just see everybody be there for one another and show up, I feel so lucky to have them.'
'And then they were there for me when Amada was born,” she continues. “We had a funeral service for [my brother] and that same week I had the baby. So it was really, really intense and obviously beyond heartbreaking, but also kind of beautiful.'
With two daughters under two and two major Hollywood careers to manage, Mendes says that 'right now, it's really about surviving those nights and trying to enjoy this time as much as possible with them, and start the bond between Esmeralda and Amada.'
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