Al Roker Jokes About Taylor Swift’s ‘Wood’ Inspiring Baby Names

Al Roker is skeptical that every Taylor Swift song title could make a good baby name.

During a Today segment on Tuesday, October 28, Dylan Dreyer brought up the most popular stories on Today.com, which included an article on how Swift, 35, influences children’s names.

“We’ll tell you which of her songs are inspiring parents the most when we come back,” Dreyer, 44, shared, before Roker, 71, joked, “A kid named Wood?”

Roker was referring to the song on Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, which uses the double entendre of “wood” to talk about her relationship with Travis Kelce.

Although “Wood” is probably not going to be used as a baby name anytime soon, the segment discussed the most-liked Swift-inspired baby names. Some of the monikers include August from 2020’s Folklore, Evermore from 2020’s Evermore and Marjorie from Evermore, the last of which is also inspired by Swift’s late grandmother.

While many fans are naming their little ones after Swift’s music, the singer has named some songs after people in her life. The Folklore track “Betty,” for example, is named after Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ daughter Betty and references their other daughters too. (Lively, 38, and Reynolds, 49, share daughters James, 10, Inez, 9, Betty, 6, and son Olin, 2.)

“I named all the characters after real people in my life who I love more than anything, and their names are James, Inez and Betty,” Swift said onstage at the Philadelphia Eras Tour stop in 2023.

Reynolds, who has been married to Lively since 2012, shared that they thought it was “amazing” that Swift used their kids’ names in her song.

“The names are the names of our kids, but you know, we trust her implicitly and she’s very sensitive to any of that stuff,” he shared during a SiriusXM Town Hall event in 2021. “And obviously the song has nothing to do with our kids other than our kids’ names. We thought it was pretty, pretty damn amazing. We still do. You know, I still walk down the street and shake my head thinking: ‘I can’t believe that happened.’”

Swift released her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, on October 3.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am to share this with you, an album that just feels so right,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post following the album’s release. “A forever thank you goes out to my mentors and friends Max [Martin] and Shellback for helping me paint this self portrait. If you thought the big show was wild, perhaps you should come and take a look behind the curtain… The Life of a Showgirl is out now.”

The album includes 12 tracks, several of which are inspired by Kelce, including “Wish List,” “The Fate of Ophelia,” “Opalite,” “Wood” and “Elizabeth Taylor.”

“It just comes from the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in my life, so that effervescence has come through on this record,” Swift explained on Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast in August, referencing the thought behind The Life of a Showgirl. “This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant.”