Actor Vin Diesel welcomed his third child to the world last week, sharing the news with a beautiful photo on his official Facebook page.

The Fast and the Furious star has now revealed some more information about his new arrival – including the emotional reason behind his choice of name.

Speaking on TODAY this morning, Vin revealed that he and his partner Paloma Jiminez were the proud parents of a daughter named Pauline, named in honour of the late actor Paul Walker.

Paul died in a tragic car crash in November 2013 at the age of 40, leaving behind him a teenage daughter.

Speaking about the choice of name, Vin said he wouldn't have had it any other way. "There's no other person that I was thinking about as I was cutting this umbilical cord," Vin said. "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."

Vin and Paloma have two other children together – six-year-old Hania and four-year-old Vincent.

Paul was in the middle of filming The Fast and the Furious 7 when he died, and some of his scenes still feature in the film, with his brothers Cody Caleb stepping in to finish his work. Speaking at the premiere of the film at the SXSW festival last week, Vin teared up as he discussed how hard it was to push on with filming after Paul's death.

"This was a labor of love," he told the audience. "It was in some ways the hardest movie I ever had to do because the relationships that you see on film are so real. When the tragedy happened, I lost my best friend. I lost my brother."

We're glad to see Paul's memory can live on with the birth of little Pauline.