Former child stars Macaulay Culkin and Brenda Song have welcomed a baby boy, whom they have named Dakota in honour of Culkin's late sister.

The first child for the couple, who met in 2017, was born on April 5. Culkin, 40, and Song, 33, said in a statement: "We're overjoyed."

Culkin's sister died in 2008 at age 29 after being hit by a car outside a bar in Los Angeles.

Culkin, who played the adorable tyke in 1990s movies such as Home Alone, My Girl and Richie Rich, had spoken about starting a family in a podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, in 2018.

In a profile in Esquire magazine in February last year, he had also revealed bits of his life with Song, who has appeared in television shows such as Scandal (2012 to 2018) and movies like Secret Obsession (2019).

They met on the set of the movie Changeland (2019), which was filmed in Thailand.

Culkin, who calls himself "Mack" now, said he was a homebody. Prior to baby Dakota's arrival, the couple were already "parents" to a brood of animals which included three cats, a few fish, a Shiba Inu and a blue-headed pionus parrot.

He will be appearing in the upcoming season 10 of TV series American Horror Story (2011 to present).

In the Esquire article, Song had said: "Truly, what makes Mack so special is that he is so unapologetically Mack.

"He knows who he is and he's 100 per cent okay with that. And that to me is an incredibly sexy quality. He's worked really hard to be the person he is."