This monograph contains stories from 60 families (107 children in all) living in Japan about how they named their children. Each story contains the child's name written in Japanese, the name written in English, the nationality of the parents, and an explanation about the name written by one of the parents. Several of the stories have appeared in past issues of Bilingual Japan in the "What's in a Name?" series, but the majority of them are new stories.
Whether you have already gone through the naming process or you anticipate facing this task in the future, you will enjoy reading how these families juggled sound, meaning, kanji, spelling, cultural preferences, family traditions, government regulations, and personal hopes and dreams when choosing the names for their children.
