Sep 13 – Four years after getting married in 2012, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif Ali Khan welcomed their first son. The pair had to go through a “traumatic time” once they revealed his name was Taimur because they were mocked for maintaining it in honour of a Mongolian invasion from the fourteenth century.
The actress discussed how she and Saif handled the controversy at the time in a recent interview. She also explained why they decided to keep Taimur and how it relates to the Adipurush actor’s early years.
On September 11 during the Expess Adda gathering, Kareena remarked, “When we came up with the name, Saif actually said…He grew up with a neighbour friend, and he always really liked his name and his name was Taimur, so he said, ‘You know, if I have a son, he was my first friend. I’d like to name him Taimur’, and that’s exactly how Taimur was named, because he was Saif’s first friend when he was living in town here. We looked it up and it means ‘iron’, and I said if I have a boy, I always want him to be as strong as iron man.”
Kareena was reminded that her sister Karisma Kapoor had stated in an interview that the Laal Singh Chaddha actress had ‘howled’ in the hospital bed when she learned that her kid was being harassed online shortly after his birth because of his name. Kareena added, expressing how she felt at the time, “I got into a bit of a shock when this happened. But luckily, I think because of us being strong and resilient and silent, I think it just kind of died down. He was the most photographed child for what reason I have no idea. It was a traumatic time, but I think both Saif and me handled it with a lot of dignity because we never actually spoke, or said anything. We just believed in what we did and we just believed in naming our child just a beautiful name.”
After welcoming their second child, Jeh, or Jehangir Ali Khan, in 2021, Kareena and Saif once again faced criticism for naming their child after Jahangir, the fourth Mughal emperor, who was also known as Prince Salim in his early life in the 16th century.