Over the summer, Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost welcomed their first child together, naming the infant boy Cosmo. But while the name might be a favorite for the couple, the Saturday Night Live star — who is gearing up for the Season 47 premiere this weekend — revealed his mother wasn’t a fan of the name at first. In fact, her reaction to her grandchild’s name was to immediately change it.
During an interview with his former SNL writer pal, Seth Meyers on his NBC late-night talk show, Late Night With Seth Meyers, Jost prefaced that while his family has always been “very supportive,” his mom was confused by the choice of name for the infant.
“My mom, I would say, was slightly thrown by it and didn’t quite understand it. I don’t know if she thought it was kind of like a hippie thing,” he said. Jost reveals that even after he and Johansson had finalized the name, his mom tried her hardest to offer alternatives in the hope they would change their mind. “She would call us after three or four days, she’d be like, ‘Cosmo.’ And she’d be like, ‘And now, is it final? Like, did you submit the birth certificate?’ And we’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, we did that at the hospital.’ She was like ‘OK, interesting. Because I was reading that there’s also a name Cosimo with an ‘I,’ so that could also be an option. Maybe Cosimo, that’s his real name, but then you can call him still Cosmo.’”
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Thankfully, his mom came around and settled on the name after speaking about it with friends, who assured her the name was actually quite common. “Eventually, she started meeting various members of the Italian community who have a lot of Cosmo relatives,” Jost said. “So then she would call, and she would say, ‘I met someone—they said their uncle’s name is Cosmo. So it is OK.’”
Despite the reassurance though, Jost admits his mom still tried her best to have a hand in her grandchild’s name, adding a bit of grandiose to the choice. “Then she goes, ‘There’s a patron saint called Cosmos, so that’s another option,’” he said. “We don’t need more worse variants on Cosmo. But thanks, Mom.”
Jost and his wife Johansson will be celebrating their first anniversary as a married couple later this month after tying the knot last October. Announcing the happy news with the organization, Meals on Wheels America, the two had a “quiet, private ceremony with their close friends and family,” according to Vanity Fair. The couple welcomed Cosmo, who is their first child together, this past August. Jost is also a ste[-dad to Johansson’s daughter Rose Dorothy whom she shares with her ex-husband, Romain Dauriac.
