Revealed: Why Nicole Kidman called her baby Sunday

The Oscar-winner's father revealed 'Sunday' was inspired by an Australian arts patron notorious for her lurid love life.

Antony Kidman said the name was first suggested by him and his wife Janelle, who drew inspiration from prominent Australian Sunday Reed.

What's in a name: Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, pictured here leaving a Sydney art gallery in January, named their daughter after Australian arts patron Sunday Reed

'I have read a bit about Sunday Reed and her husband John. She was a key mover and shaker in the arts around the beginning of the century.

'The name Sunday struck me as being a nice name for a woman, so my wife and I mentioned it,' Antony Kidman told Australia's Daily Telegraph newspaper on Wednesday.

Inspiration: Sunday Reed with her husband John and adopted son Sweeney in 1947

Sunday Reed lived for nine years during the 1930s in a three-way love triangle relationship involving her arts patron husband and one of Australia's best-known artists, Sidney Nolan. She eventually became Nolan's muse.

Nolan is best known in his homeland for a series of stylised paintings of famous outlaw Ned Kelly, who battled police in an armoured suit and whose final days were turned into several films variously starring Mick Jagger and late Australian actor Heath Ledger, who died of a drug overdose in January.

Sunday Reed was also niece of one of Australia's richest men and Nolan painted his Ned Kelly series, several of which hang in the Australian National Gallery, in her living room.

Reed committed suicide 10 days after the death of her husband in 1981.

Nicole and her husband Keith Urban had spent a long time looking at a quote by Nolan about birth, hanging in a Sydney art gallery, shortly before announcing Kidman's pregnancy in January 2008.

'When you are young you are given a good view of life, because of your closeness to birth,' Nolan wrote.

The baby's middle name, Rose, is a tribute to Keith's late grandmother.

Nicole's first biological child was born in Nashville on Monday and weighed 6 pounds, 7.5 ounces.

Nicole and former husband Tom Cruise adopted two children, Isabella, 15, and 13-year-old Connor, during nearly 10 years of marriage that ended in divorce in 2001.