I think my parents had a harder time with my name. They wanted to call me either Midori or Sakura apparently (my Grandma had given them Japanese name suggestions and those were the two they liked) and in the end they chose Midori because it was easier to say. Apparently my Mum had tried to convince my Dad to call me Hope Diamond at one point of the pregnancy though.. not sure where she got that idea from. If I had been a boy I would have been Kentaro apparently.. to this day I am SO relieved that I turned out to be a girl..

We have a boy’s and girl’s name tentatively chosen for no. 2 as well! Hub thinks that foreign sounding names are cooler so I basically get to decide and he either yays or nays it.

My parents were apparently going to call me Blair if I was boy. No offence to any Blairs out there but I’m glad I wasn’t

Looking forward to hearing what you decide on for Goma chan! Boys names are definitely tough!

If we’d had a girl, I wanted very much to call her Kirie, so am sad that I never had a chance to use that.

We also wanted to mess with the “male” and “female” images of names here, so would have given a girl very strong masculine kanji, and for the boys we chose more graceful, gentle characters.

My husband is Seiju, a pure tree. Our family name is “small wood”. His mother wanted to plant a tree in that wood. I liked the idea she had so we followed on with it.

Our elder son is Yoshiki, a graceful tree. The kanji for grace is always used for women and is usually read as “Toshi”

Our second son was going to be Haruki. I wanted the “hareteiru” (sunny) kanji but Seiju won and got the “spring” kanji because he loves the shape of it. So he is a spring tree. However, the day that he was born my husband decided suddenly to change the order of the characters round to celebrate the fact that the baby had been born safely despite being premature, with severe placenta previa and he was also the wrong way round inside me, so Seiju decide his name should be upended too! So he’s now Kiharu. Except that we all call him Harry!

Originally my dad wanted to call me ‘Rock’ if I was a boy (i know!!) and Jolene if I was a girl. My mum wasn’t keen on the boy’s name but was quite happy with Jolene, as there was a popular song called Jolene around that time. However, when I was born mum decided that she didn’t like Jolene and I was nameless for a few weeks until I got the name Jessica. I was apparently quite the grumpy crier at the hospital and as my last name starts with R, the nurses nicknamed me JR after the guy from Dallas. Luckily, that nickname wore off quite quickly, but because I didn’t have any hair until I was a year old, my dad called me Spud, which has stuck. Also, when my youngest sister started talking she couldn’t say my name so she called me Jedi which has also stuck. So not many people in my family actually use my real name even now!

When my middle sister was born, my parents had decided definitely that her name would be Michelle but the hadn’t decided on a middle name. There was a really nice nurse at the hospital named Kim who helped my parents a lot so they gave my sister that as her middle name, even though she was a complete stranger!

When my little sister was born, my parents were humming and haaring over the girls name. They were going to give her my dad’s middle name (Stephen) if she was a boy, but were deciding between Rachel and Stephanie. They had told us the two girl’s choices but when mum went into labour they hadn’t told us that they’d definitely decided on Stephanie. So when we got a phone call saying that my sister had been born, we started calling the people we had on the list to tell. We told everyone that Rachel had been born and everyone started sending cards and flowers to Mum and baby Rachel….at first mum and dad were wondering who Rachel was because they’d already been calling her Stephanie for a few days!

As you know, we have had one boys name and one girls name picked out forever and ever. They both are names that neither of us have comprised with each other on. They both were originally my idea but Naoki loved them the moment he heard them. I don’t know what we are going to do with our 2nd or 3rd child (especially if they are boys) because we just can’t choose. The poor baby will probably still nameless till the last minute, lol!

I love all 3 names that you have picked out and know that one of them will definitely fit your beautiful little boy!! Can’t wait to find out which one it ends up being!!

Our daughter’s names are Emilia Claire, Misaki Elisabeth, Sakura Nicole and Natsuki Sofia.

When I was pregnant with Emi, we decided not to find out if we were having a boy or a girl so we had to decide on names for both. We were living in the US at the time so we searched and searched for a book of Japanese baby names but couldn’t find anything so I had to rely on Chikara. We never found a Japanese name for a girl and I had always loved Emilia, which would also work in Japanese, so we went with that. But I’m so glad we didn’t have a boy because now that I’ve lived in Japan for awhile I now know that the names Chikara chose were ridiculous! Also, I really wanted Katherine for a middle name but Chikara had had too many Katherine’s for guitar students and they were all weird so he was totally against it but even now I wish I had just gone with it.

When I was pregnant with Misaki we found out ahead of time that she was a girl so we only had to choose one name. This time the tricky thing was deciding if we should go with another Western name that worked in Japanese or choose a Japanese name that worked in English. We ended up with two names but when she was born she just looked like Misaki and we both knew it right away. Also when I was pregnant with her the September 11 attack in New York happened and because of that I really wanted to include the word “hope” in her name. When Chikara started searching for her name I liked Misaki right away but when he told me her name could have the kanji for hope in it, I was totally sold. Afterwards I found out the the middle name Elisabeth has been used for five generations in my family (including me) so I was glad we used it for her.

Sakura’s name came quickly to us. I debated for awhile between Yume and Sakura so I asked my Japanese friends what they thought and everyone said Sakura right away. The only thing I didn’t realize is that Sakura is usually given as a name to girls born in April so I get asked a lot if that’s when she was born. Now I answer that she was born in June but we chose her name in April and that seems to satisfy everyone. Also Chikara researched kanji for her name and came up with 咲良 (blossoming of good) which made it perfect.

We ran out of energy for choosing names with deep meaning when we found out we were pregnant with Natsuki! My husband was very picky about meaning and especially the relationship of meanings between the first and middle names while I was picky about how they sounded together. Chikara spent days at the library looking at names but Natsuki was the only one I liked. When he told me that one possible meaning was “summer princess” I wanted that because my name Sarah means “princess” and my grandpa always called me his princess.

If we had had a boy I probably would’ve tried to use the kanji of Chikara’s name (力) to create a name for him. But seriously my husband chose the oddest names and I’m glad I didn’t have to fight with him over it!!!

Now that our children have grown into their names I can’t imagine having named them anything else. I’m sure you’ll choose the right name!

We had Ali’s name picked out, and were 99% sure on it, but we had a couple of other names as back ups in case it felt wrong when he was born. We hadn’t told anyone our short list names, because I didn’t want negative feedback. And also I am kind of superstitious, so I didn’t want to start using his name until after he arrived safely.

I was keen to have names picked though, because my brother and sister in law have taken 3 or 4 weeks to name all their babies and it makes it hard work… you get used to calling them “Baby”, and all their cards etc. just say “Dear Baby”. Luckily Ali looked like an Alistair Luke, so we were able to have him named right away, and tell people the name when we rang to let them know he had been born.

All that said, we very rarely call DS by his given name. In fact, I am pretty sure he doesn’t even know his given name. We call him by his nickname 99.9% of the time! I suppose he’ll have to learn his real name before he goes to school!