As a boy I was a member of the Scout movement whose motto was, and probably still is, “Be Prepared.” My wife is Japanese so being prepared is part of her DNA (damn, those Japanese are organised). As such we’ve been preparing a choice of names for our baby in readiness for the birth next February.

Choosing a name is probably an expectant couple’s first encounter with parental responsibility. Whatever name they choose will stay with the child for their entire life. Their name will define who they are and how they’ll be perceived by others.

Just to add to the pressure, it’s important for us that the name sounds the same whether pronounced with a British or Japanese accent. For this reason we’ve decided on short names containing syllables which sound alike in either Japan or Britain.

To add even more pressure, I believe that names must flow. That means names with hard syllables must be balanced by softer sounding names. In Japan children are only given one name, so it’s much easier, and having two names sounds very international. We’ve decided on two names, the first will be short containing sounds common to the two languages, the second long so as to add balance and flow.

I’ve written more about how we went about choosing our child’s name over at Complete Kaizen and I’m pleased to say that, after much deliberation, we’ve finally arrived at two names for a girl and two for a boy. Of course we’ll have to wait until the 20 week scan in August before we know for sure which name our child will carry through life.

For a girl we’ve chosen Hannah Samantha. Hannah is also a Japanese name, spelt Hana and meaning flower. If our baby is a boy, we’ve chosen Noah Christopher. Noah is becoming a popular name in the UK and fits our criteria nicely with each syllable sounding the same in both Japanese and English. I also believe that when you include the surname Scotchmer, both names have a nice rhythm and flow.

We hope we’ve done right by these names and we hope that either Hannah or Noah will be pleased with our choice. In fact thinking about it, that’s another lesson learnt from our “naming day” exercise. No matter what we do for our child, at the end of the day all we can do as parents, is hope.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 1:01 am and is filed under Preparation.