Vice President JD Vance sat down for an exclusive interview in his office at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and shared a detail that most parents will find either deeply relatable or slightly nerve-wracking: he and Second Lady Usha Vance still don't have a name picked out for their baby boy, expected later this year. And they're in no rush.
It's a tradition for the couple, apparently. All three of their children — Ewan, 8; Vivek, 6; and Mirabel, 4 — arrived nameless and left the hospital with one.
"We've talked about a few names. We're working on it, but, you know, with all three of our kids, we actually didn't settle on their names until after they were born, which is, I think, pretty unusual."
Unusual is one word for it. In an era of gender-reveal pyrotechnics and nursery themes announced before the second trimester, the Vances are doing something almost countercultural: waiting to meet their child before deciding what to call him.
The couple announced in January that they were expecting a boy, their fourth child. Usha Vance, 40, carries a quiet distinction with the pregnancy: she is the first vice president's wife to be expecting since Ellen Colfax gave birth in April 1870, during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. That's over 150 years between pregnancies in the Naval Observatory household — a gap that says something about the age at which most vice presidents serve, as Daily Mail reports.
The Vances married in 2014 after meeting at Yale Law School, where they attended the same classes. Friends and even a former law school professor reportedly noted that Vance was visibly "lovesick" around Usha. He has described his feelings during their dating phase as "overwhelming." Their eldest son arrived in 2017, and the family has grown steadily since.
"Most people choose a name. Well, before the kid is born. I think Usha and I have never just found a name where it's like, 'Alright, this is what we want to name our kid.' And so we always wait to meet them and settle on the names from there."
Something is appealing about that. A willingness to let the child be a person before becoming a label.
This isn't a policy article. There's no bill to dissect, no agency to scrutinize. But it's worth pausing on what it means to have a young, growing family in the vice president's residence — something that hasn't happened in modern memory.
Vance grew up in working-class Ohio. Usha's parents are Indian immigrants. They built a life together that now includes three kids, a fourth on the way, and the second-highest office in the country. Before his time as vice president, Vance previously split his time between Washington and the family's home in Cincinnati during his tenure as a Republican senator. The family knows what it means to balance public life with raising children.
In a political culture that treats family values as a slogan, the Vances are living them — visibly, without performance. No elaborate announcement campaign for the baby name. No focus-grouped reveal. Just two parents who want to look at their son before they decide what to call him.
Baby number four arrives later this year. The name arrives when it's ready.
