J Balvin named his son Rio because he wanted him to 'float'
J Balvin named his son Rio because he wanted him to "float".
The 37-year-old rapper - whose real name is José Álvaro Osorio Balvín - welcomed his first child back in June 2021 with model Valentina Ferrer and revealed that the inspiration behind the name Rio was because it is the Portuguese word for river.
He said: "Rio like River… I want him to just float."
The 'I Like It' hitmaker- who is initially from Medellín, Colombia - also opened up about moving to Oklahoma to learn English as a foreign exchange student and claimed he eventually felt "inspired" to kickstart a music career once he arrived in New York.
Speaking on 'The Ellen DeGeneres Show', he added: "I did not choose Oklahoma… I loved Oklahoma, don’t get me wrong. But when I got to New York I felt inspired to conquer the world with my music."
The revelations come just days after the Grammy Award winning star spoke out about his struggles with mental health and claimed that there is a "stigma" that stems from his culture.
He said: "I never thought that I was going to suffer about mental health. I remember seeing people go to the psychiatric and I would be like, ‘Why are they going there? They’re crazy. Because that’s a stigma, something that has always been in the Latino culture or even around the world and once I started suffering from anxiety and depression, I understood that it was a chemical disbalance.
So I feel that I need to speak out because I think … I go to that pain with myself … because we have a voice. So I think music is the way it’s helped us to send a message. And I really can feel that it’s to tell other people about mental health and how to help them."
