Just as eagle-eyed fans speculated, Taylor Swift's good friends Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively did reportedly let her drop a bombshell on her new album folklore: the name of their third daughter, Betty. A source "with knowledge of the situation" told People that "the song was named in part for the couple's third daughter." Betty was born October 4, 2019.
In the song "betty," the names of Betty's two other siblings, big sisters James and Inez, are also used in the lyrics, which prompted speculation among Swifties that the singer outed the name of Lively and Reynolds' third child.
Swift sings on the track: "She said 'James, get in, let's drive,'" "You heard the rumors from Inez / You can't believe a word she says," and lines like "Betty, I know where it all went wrong," repeated throughout the song.
The song is about a teen love triangle—so it's obviously not explicitly about the Reynolds children, who are all under the age of six.
Reynolds and Lively had kept Betty's name secret for months. In December 2019, Reynolds appeared on the Today show, where he made a point to keep the name secret from the show's hosts.
When Reynolds was asked how he came up with her name, he joked to the hosts, "We haven't yet! We're gonna be original, and all the letters in her name are silent. I want to give her something to push against in life."
Today co-host Craig Melvin quipped back, "She'll be known as anonymous." Reynolds replied, "Yeah, exactly."
It's also not the first time Swift has drawn on her friendship with the couple in her music—she sampled their oldest daughter James' vocals on the song "Gorgeous."
