Padma Lakshmi Drops Hints About Baby's Name

By Allison Adato

Thursday January 14, 2010 03:20 PM EST

Padma Lakshmi (center)

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Padma Lakshmi is keeping a lot about her pregnancy secret, but she's revealing that the baby, due this spring, will hold to at least one tradition.

"I am going to name the child an Indian name – I'm Indian," the Top Chef host, 39, said Tuesday at Vermilion restaurant in New York City, at a dinner celebrating Indian women in the culinary arts.

Without divulging the baby's gender, Lakshmi says she has in mind "not a fancy name, but a name that is close to my family. It will be after someone in my family."

"So don't expect to see an Anglicized name – it will be a classically Indian Sanskrit name," said Lakshmi, whose own first name means "lotus flower" in Sanskrit.

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