Picking Kai’s name was easy. I think it was the 3rd name Maria’s folks suggested, and Maria and I both really liked it. But with Baby X, we’re having a harder time coming up with a name.

Last week I talked about Gen as a possible first name. The Japanese character for it has a special meaning in Maria’s family, but I have to admit I’m not excited about how the name sounds. So we’re considering other possibilities. We’re sticking with the idea of a Japanese first name, and we’ve got a few basic tests a name must past in order to be a candidate:

1. It has to pass the playground test - i.e. it can’t be a name that other kids will tease him for. So names like Waki and You are definitely out.
2. It has to sound good with Toppa. A couple of common endings for boys’ names are ~taka and ~tomo. Names with those endings are out. The alliteration with Toppa is just too strong.
3. It can’t be a mouthful. That is, it has to be easily understood by a Western ear. Since he’ll be growing up in the US, I don’t want him to have a name he’ll have to repeat 3 times to people when he introduces himself. So long or hard to pronounce names like Sakutarou or Natsuhisa are out. Possible exceptions are names that have a short nickname: for example, Yasuhiro can be just Yasu.

Maria and I have both been really busy this week, so we haven’t had much time to talk it over. She has a Japanese baby name book, but since it’s in Japanese, I can’t read it. But I found a web page with Japanese boys’ names in Romanji, so I can read them. I just looked through all of them and came up with a list of candidates. I don’t necessarily really like all these names, but they pass the three tests and they sound at least ok to me.

* Maria’s father is Shigenori, and her grandfather was Shigeo, so any name starting with Shige gets special consideration (in Japan, it’s ok to re-use part of a family name, but re-using the entire name is considered bad luck) .

If you see anything you like on the list, let me know, and we’ll give it closer look.