Naming Pepper

It was so much easier when we gave Kai his name. Bill wanted his father's name, so all we had to come up with was a middle name. Since we wouldn't have even gotten pregnant without Dr. Liu, we decided to show our appreciation and gratefulness by using the first word from Dr. Liu's given name "Jia" (which means "excellence") as the first word of Kai's Chinese name. We decided to use Kai as the second word because it means "triumph". Kai is Dr. Liu's triumph. My personal triumph.

And Kai's a unique English name... so we thought.

Within the first 6 months after we relocated to Vancouver, we met at least 4 different Kais of different ethnic backgrounds (none of which Chinese). Among the 4 sets of parents, only one Caucasion-Japanese parents told us that they named their son Kai because it means it means "the ocean" in Japanese. The other 3 were pretty much the typical hippish, alternative life style type of Vancouverites who wanted to have a name that's "way out there".

Enough about Kai's name.

I personally never thought we'd be pregnant again. I mean, I wanted to have another kid because I would like Kai to have a sibling. However, being 39 years old and with my medical history, I knew I had to keep my expectations in place. I would be more than happy to adopt. There are many kids out there who need a good family.

As it turned out, we are blessed again with another child of our own. And a little girl nonetheless!!

Naming a girl seems much harder. We want to keep the same pattern: an English first name and a Chinese word as the middle name. For the English name, we tried Donna, Bill's mother's name, but it doesn't go well with a Chinese name in the middle. We then tried to use my mom's name and it was even more problematic: Jade Martin (porn star name), Emerald Martin (weird), or Fragrance Martin (unheard of). My mom's English name is Ada, but I don't think it has any special meaning to her. I even tried my own grandmothers' names, which would be Snow and Pearl when translated into English. However, I've never been fond of my paternal grandmother and didn't know my maternal grandmother at all. Using either one of their names would not be meaningful.

So for now she's nicknamed Pepper because I've craving really spicy food this pregnancy. We won't really use Pepper as part of her name though. For one thing, I'm sure our kids will not want to be known as Kai and Pepper (cayenne pepper) in school.

I wouldn't.