A couple of years ago I mused out loud about how I thought my son's name fit him perfectly. Written 誠士 in Japanese, it means “sincere gentleman”.
Note that this does not necessarily mean “cordial”. Or “gracious”. Or “bothers to
say good morning”.
My wife and I struggled for months to come up with a name for him. I was leaning toward ‘Kai’ which, written as 海, means ocean. I kind of liked the meaning. I thought maybe it would plant a love in him for the great outdoors. Mostly though I just liked the way it sounded.
My wife didn’t like it any of it.
We eventually settled on the phonetic version of his name. From there we had to navigate the deeply deliberative process of deciding which characters to use.
