Kylie Jenner gave her son a ‘Hebrew name.’ But it’s gibberish
Kylie Jenner at the 2023 Met Gala. Photo by Taylor Hill/Getty Images
By Beth Harpaz July 31, 2023
Kylie Jenner has changed her son’s name from Wolf to Aire (pronounced like “air”). She says it means “lion of God” in Hebrew. It doesn’t.
The child was born to Jenner and rapper Travis Scott in February 2022. “His legal name is Wolf Webster so I’m going to do Aire Webster,” she said in a video, spelling out the name as “A-I-R-E.”
“I just always wanted a name for him that had meaning and I like it’s a Hebrew name,” she said, adding: “It means lion of God.”
“Kylie, honey, you’re good at a lot of things but this is wrong,” Amy Albertson, a self-described Jewish advocate and educator, said in an Instagram reel posted over the weekend. “Aire in Hebrew means nothing. Lion of God is the name Ariel: Ari-el, lion of God.” Albertson noted that the name Aryeh means lion, “if you spelled it differently. Could be similar to Aire, but pronouncing your son’s name Aire — it means, nothing, sorry.”
Sarah Bunin Benor, vice provost and professor of contemporary Jewish studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, confirmed in an email to the Forward that Ariel means “lion of God” and Aryeh means “lion,” but that Aire is not a Hebrew name. “It’s possible that she thought Aire was a variant,” Benor said.
Benor referred to a citation from the website behindthename.com in which the name Aire is described as an Estonian, Sami or Japanese name.
In a different video clip, Jenner says the name “literally puts the ‘aire’ in billionaire,” and that the child’s nicknames include “Air Bear” and “02” (meaning oxygen). Her daughter is named Stormi, and she noted that there’s “no Stormi without Aire.” She added that she’d name her next child “Breezy.”
Jenner, 25 and the founder of Kylie Cosmetics, has been famous since she was featured as a little girl on the TV show Keeping Up with the Kardashians. She is a sister to Kendall Jenner and half-sister to Rob, Kourtney, Khloe and Kim Kardashian through her mother Kris Jenner. She has more than 50 million followers on TikTok and nearly 400 million on Instagram.
One person commenting on Aire not being Hebrew brought up the antisemitic comments made by Kim Kardashian’s ex-husband Kanye West, aka Ye. “You mean Kanye’s ex sister-in-law is ignorant on all things Jewish? Color me shocked!”
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