What’s in a Name?

To a newborn baby, not much. But for the parents, coming up with the perfect name for their child can be a daunting and overwhelming task. The name is one of the first ways you define who your baby is, and it’s a gift that your child will carry with them throughout their life. When it came to deciding on Mio’s name, it was a long and difficult process. We started brainstorming names for her the moment we found out that she was going to be a girl, but it still took us a couple months to decide what would be the perfect name for our baby daughter.

There was one thing that Dan and I agreed on from the outset, and that was that we wanted to give our daughter a Japanese first name. Asian American parents typically give their children Western first names and reserve the middle name to showcase their ethnic heritage (be it Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc.). We had considered this more popular route, but unlike most Asian American families who have a last name that is markedly Asian, our surname is “Allen,” which is a very common Western last name. I have no problem with the surname — in fact, I embraced the simplicity of it, especially after having had to constantly correct people on the spelling and pronunciation of my Japanese maiden name (which was “Yokoyama”) for the first twenty-five years of my life. However, when it came to the naming of our child, if we chose to give her a Western first name, paired with the last name “Allen,” there would be virtually no indication of her ethnic heritage — something I felt strongly against becoming lost.

My Japanese heritage and cultural legacy is something that has always been influential and important in my life, and  my appreciation for it is something that I feel strongly about passing onto our children. Since our child is three-fourths Japanese in her ethnic makeup, we wanted to make sure that her Japanese heritage came into play in a prominent way in her name. Slipping a Japanese name in as a middle name just didn’t feel like enough for us in our case — I feel like middle names are rarely used nor noticed except on paper in official documentation and records. I didn’t have a middle name for much of my life until my maiden name became my middle name, so I may not have the same experience as those who did, but I had never really thought about my lack of a middle name because I rarely missed having one. The slot of the middle name is sometimes even used as a place of “name shame,” kind of the same way one would lock a crazy aunt in the attic — for example, parents who feel obligated to name their child after a family member with an outdated name they’re not crazy about will sometimes sneak it in as a middle name, hoping that it will go relatively unnoticed in their child’s life. We decided that we would rather give our child a Japanese name as a first name, rather than as a middle name where it would likely be overlooked and forgotten.

As united as we were on that front, choosing a Japanese name that worked for us was not easy. I bought a baby name book in Japanese and went through it, compiling a list of over twenty names that I liked. I read them all off to Dan, who then rejected almost every single one of them because they were too difficult to pronounce for Americans, or sounded too much something silly in English. As pretty as some of the names sounded to me, I was looking at them from a Japanese perspective, knowing what Chinese characters (or kanji) were being used and the cultural context behind those names. Dan brought an objective American perspective to the table, being completely ignorant of the background behind the names — and as frustrating as that was for me, I had to acknowledge the fact that as long as our child was going to grow up in the States, most people would perceive the name the same way that Dan was. How would they know otherwise? I had to take into consideration how the average American would perceive the name. I brought my parents and other family members into the discussion to see what they had to say, which only complicated matters, as they had their own ideas of what they thought were good traditional Japanese names. It was enough to make me want to just give up and keep our fruit nicknaming system from pregnancy and extend it beyond utero — “Papaya Allen” didn’t sound so bad at that point.

After a while, I decided to stop shopping around for other people’s opinions and put my foot down that the baby’s name would be something Dan and I decided on our own. We would not tell anyone the name until the baby was born, to avoid any unwanted and uninvited comments about whether someone approved or disapproved of the name. We figured that while people will say what they want about a baby’s potential name while she’s still in the womb, it was a lot harder for them to openly deprecate a name once it was already tacked onto a living, breathing human being that was placed before them.

Because we were blessed with a daughter in the springtime, I wanted to find a way to incorporate an element of the season into her name. I love the deep meanings and cultural context that various flowers have in Japanese culture — for example, plum blossoms are said to symbolize wifely fidelity because they bloom when other flowers won’t, in the cold and snow of early spring. I toyed with a variety of seasonal spring names and flower-based names, but I just kept coming back to a desire to incorporate the cherry blossom into the name. Those that know me well know that cherry blossoms have always been my favorite flower — I have a habit of collecting all pretty things that have cherry blossoms on them, my wedding theme was cherry blossoms, and I still miss seeing the multitude of cherry blossom trees that bloom every spring around the Tidal Basin of the Potomac back in Washington, DC. The ephemeral nature of the cherry blossoms remind us of the transience of life — characterized by their breathtaking beauty when in bloom and their swift death shortly afterwards, the blossoms have often been regarded as a symbol of mortality by the Japanese, and prominently appears in various forms of Japanese art, music and culture. Cherry blossoms, despite their fleeting lifetime every spring, still effloresce and flourish every year, and quickly but gracefully wilt away once they have reached their peak. Because of its short lifetime and the way they wilt so quickly, some discourage the incorporation of cherry blossoms into one’s name, but I feel that cherry blossoms are a reminder of the brevity and delicate aspect of our own human lives, and the importance of living each day to the fullest with no regrets, as if it were our last. I certainly do not wish a fleeting lifespan for our daughter, but I do hope that she will thrive and enrich her own life as well as others’ and appreciate and make the most of each and every day in her precious lifetime.

That is when we came across the name Mio (美桜) — written with the Chinese characters, “beauty” and “cherry blossom,” it literally translates to “beauty of the cherry blossom(s)”. While the phonetic name has been around for quite some time, the name with the pairing of these particular Chinese characters has only made its appearance in recent years. It’s been steadily gaining popularity within the past decade, though, and according to the 2010 ranking of Japanese baby names, it ranked as the fifth most popular girl name of 2010. It is a refreshing modern name, that draws upon the very traditional element of the cherry blossom, which has a lot of historical and cultural significance in Japan. It is a name that sounds adorable for a little girl, but has a timeless elegance that will carry her through adulthood as well. Finally, the name is short and is easy to both spell and pronounce for Americans, compared to a lot of other Japanese names. The way it is read is mee-oh, which I feel is pretty straightforward.

There were a few other names that we were also considering, but Mio always stuck out to both of us as a favorite. Once I was in the third trimester, Dan started calling my pregnant belly by the name and it was very natural. (I’m sure the baby appreciated finally having a real name instead of being called a different fruit every week!) It was then that we knew with assurance that we had finally found the perfect name.

For the middle name, we opted to choose a Western name, and the process was much easier. There were a handful of girl names that I have always loved, so it was only a matter of deciding which one flowed best with the rest of the name. Ever since I was a little girl taking piano lessons, I loved Beethoven’s “Für Elise” (English translation: “For Elise”), and used to play it — or a slightly butchered version of it — over and over on the piano. I loved the name for its classic elegance, and feel like it is a name that has and will always be beautiful in any era. Currently ranked at #218 for baby girl names in the United States, I liked that it is not as ubiquitous and common as some of the latest “trendy” names, but that it is still recognizable as a beautiful girl’s name. The name “Elise” has French roots and is a variant of the more common “Elizabeth,” and apparently means “God’s promise” or “God is my oath.” There are some variations on how to spell the name, such as Elyse and Elisse, but the classic original spelling appealed to us the most. The name was hands-down Dan’s favorite among the ones we were considering (though I have a strong suspicion that his love for the Lotus Elise sports car had something to do with it… :P), and so the search for the middle name was pretty quick and painless.

So that is the story of how we named our daughter, Mio Elise Allen.
Finding the perfect name for her was a process we wrestled with for a long time, but now we can’t imagine her being called by any other name. We love her name, and we hope that she grows to love it, too.

As an aside, I don’t know what we are going to do if we ever have a son… I looked through every single boy name in the baby name books just out of curiosity, but couldn’t find a single boy name that I liked. Not a single one! I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we get there….