Vin Diesel honors Paul Walker in naming his new baby girl

Vin Diesel has honored the memory of costar Paul Walker by naming his newest baby, a girl, after his late friend.

Yes, a girl named Paul -- sort of. Diesel and girlfriend Paloma Jimenez will call their daughter Pauline. So Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively can safely sit on that gender-bending baby-name crown for a while.

“There’s no other person that I was thinking about as I was cutting this umbilical cord,� the actor told Natalie Morales of the “Today� show over the weekend during a helicopter ride that was part of his “Furious 7� promotion work. “I just thought -- I knew he was there. And it felt like, you know, a way to keep his memory a part of my family and a part of my world.�

Walker died at age 40 in a high-speed car crash in Santa Clarita on Nov. 30, 2013. He’d already reportedly finished filming his dramatic scenes for “Furious 7� and most of his action scenes, and his brothers stepped in to help the production fill in the blanks.

Diesel, in the “Today� segment that aired Monday, also confirmed last week’s rumors that his newly arrived third child is of the princess persuasion. The 47-year-old and Jimenez, 31, already were parents to a daughter and a son, Hania Riley, 6, and Vincent Sinclair, 4.

He announced the birth -- though not the specific birth date, gender or any details about length or weight -- in a Facebook post last Monday, quoting lyrics from “What a Wonderful World.�

Follow Christie D’Zurilla on Twitter @theCDZ and Google+. Follow the Ministry of Gossip on Twitter @LATcelebs.