Baby Names

You may think that naming a baby is pretty straight-forward. If you are not Japanese, you might even be right. I think many Americans give a name to their baby because it sounds nice, or it is the name of their favorite singer, or because it is their name, or because it is another family member's name. Sometimes, they might look up its origin and what the name means, but that is usually an after-thought.

Rie, on the other hand, is taking our role in naming our child very seriously. In Japan, you don't worry about the sound so much as the meaning. Rie has been looking for good characters from the Japanese writing system that they borrowed from the Chinese. But, it is not enough to just find good meanings. It is also important to count the number of strokes each character takes, how many strokes of the pen each name takes, and even how many strokes the last letter of the family name and the first letter of the given name total. It all seems very exhausting to me, but luckily Rie has the energy and skill to name a baby.

Here is a picture of one page from the notebook Rie uses to do her work: