Do you love Kentucky basketball so much that you would name your child after the head coach?
That’s exactly what two Kentucky fans in Prestonsburg did recently.
Shawn and Cari Perry decided to name their newborn baby Cali, which of course goes together to make Cali Perry.
Check out their story:
“My wife’s name is Cari, which is just one letter off, and she loves [the TV show] Grey’s Anatomy, which has a character named Callie, so she was on board right away,” Shawn said. “When I said it — Cali Perry — it just clicked. I said, ‘That’s the one!’ But I had to say it two or three times before she understood why I liked it so much.”
Which is: The Hall of Fame coach of his beloved Wildcats is named John Calipari. Or Cali-Perry. Friends and family in Prestonsburg, Ky., population 3,000-ish, loved the name, “thought it was the coolest thing that ever was.”
It fit even more after Cali was born. She arrived eight weeks early, via emergency C-section after Shawn’s wife developed a life-threatening condition called preeclampsia, and little Cali Perry was just 3 pounds, 5 ounces at birth on July 15, 2017.
“She was so tiny,” Shawn said. “While she was in the NICU [neonatal intensive care unit], the nurses nicknamed her Wildcat Perry, because she had to be a fighter. That’s why people say her real name is perfect.”
