|PIC1|Well known for his power-house vocal style and flailing dreadlocks, P.O.D lead singer Sonny Sandoval is now gaining notoriety for something else: baby names.
According to the New York Times, Sandoval is being credited with popularizing the name of his six-year-old daughter Nevaeh (nah-VAY-uh), which is now the 70th most popular name for baby girls. The Times trace the surge of the name, which amounted to nearly 4,500 Nevaeh's born last year, to an appearance Sandoval made on MTV in 2000 with his daughter where he explained the origin of the name as, "Heaven spelled backwards."
The name has risen most quickly among blacks but is also popular with evangelical Christians, the Times reports. Cleveland Kent Evans, president of the American Name Society, told the Times that Nevaeh is the, "most remarkable phenomenon in baby names," over the last few generations.
