FAQ
Q: How did you come up with the name Kai? Is that a family name?
A: No, Kai (k-eye) is not a family name.
I first heard the name Kai in high school when studying poets in an English class. I was drawn to Gary Snyder, the often-classified Beat poet and Pulitzer Prize win
ner, for his interests in Zen and nature and for his direct, observational work. Snyder named his oldest son Kai, and I instantly loved that name. Short but very strong. A clean and rather simple sound. A look that’s a bit exotic. And Kai was born in 1968, just like me. Snyder wrote a number of poems mentioning Kai, but this one I now appreciate fully:
Not Leaving the House
When Kai is born
I quit going out
Hang around the kitchen – make cornbread
Let nobody in.
Mail is flat.
Masa lies on her side, Kai sighs,
Non washes and sweeps
We sit and watch
Masa nurse, and drink green tea.
Navajo turquoise beads over the bed
A peacock tail feather at the head
A badger pelt from Nagano-ken
For a mattress; under the sheet;
A pot of yogurt setting
Under the blankets, at his feet.
Masa, Kai,
And Non, our friend
In the garden light reflected in
Not leaving the house.
From dawn till late at night
making a new world of ourselves
around this life.
I filed the name Kai away in my brain and scribbled it on the mandatory list of baby names that every high school girl keeps in a grubby notebook.
Cut to my freshman year of college. One of the deans of the college had named his son Kai, and this Kai lived in a room across the hall from my room. My love of the name floated up from my literary and high school memories; it was cool that I had met a Kai in the real world.
Cut to the months of my pregnancy. R and I made out separate lists of baby names and adjusted them over the trimesters. I read from my grubby old list and added new names to make my master list. We both looked through baby name books (thank you, Karin and Jamie!!). And at the beginning of October we had a "name powwow" and came up with what to take to the hospital. We didn’t know the sex of the baby, so we agreed on both boy and girl names. We actually had just one girl name, but I was quite certain that we wouldn’t need it. (For most of my pregnancy I felt that the baby was a boy.)
We decided on three boy names and ranked them in a loose order. Desmond was at the top (and I had thought of the baby as Desmond through the whole pregnancy, although we called the baby "Crumbcake" as a working title). Kai was a close second, and Maxfield was next. R insisted that we needed to see the baby first before picking a name, and a number of my other friends agreed. A few friends even told me that they had switched their name picks completely once seeing their baby. I was skeptical and really thought that Desmond was it, but I was willing to be open about it and see the kid first.
Cut to me on Halloween (no pun intended), flat on my back in the OR getting an unexpected C-section. (ARGH!! Don’t ask!) The anesthesiologist put up a mirror for me to see my baby making its way into the world. I saw the head of dark hair and little guy face and knew it was a boy before the surgeon even said the words. Then, in what seemed like the next instant, R was holding my son by my side. I looked into the baby’s eyes and knew right then that he was not a Desmond at all. He was a Kai.
In my hospital room after the birth, R and I spent hours with our son, and a few times every hour we would say to each other, "He just isn’t a Desmond, really, is he? He’s a Kai." I had thought of my son as Desmond for so long and we so liked the name that we agreed to use it as his middle name. Then we put my father’s name next (Ralph), my father being the cool guy that he is. So after letting his full name gel, knowing we had it right, we filled out the hospital paperwork and told family and friends that we had welcomed Kai into the world.
We love the name Kai for the reasons I mentioned previously but also for what the name means in different languages: As we understand it, after reading through many sources and books:
* Kai is Hawaiian (perhaps also Japanese) for "ocean" or "moving sea": This is perfect for him because he never stopped moving inside me during his 9 months. He bounced around during his ultrasounds and he rarely took a break from forcefully pushing me. The skin on my midsection undulated day in and day out.
* Kai is Navajo for "willow tree": A great-great grandmother of R’s was Native American, and I am a bit of a tree-hugging hippie.
* Kai is Scandinavian for "earth": R’s mother’s father had Scandinavian roots, and "earth" is just cool as a meaning. Total nature.
* Kai is Japanese for many things, apparently, but it can represent ideas like "forgiveness" and "to amend" or "reform" (in Chinese, potentially "change"): Kai arrived right when he was meant to. He has made me whole.
Q: How did you come up with the name Kai? Is that a family name?
A: No, Kai (k-eye) is not a family name.
I first heard the name Kai in high school when studying poets in an English class. I was drawn to Gary Snyder, the often-classified Beat poet and Pulitzer Prize win
ner, for his interests in Zen and nature and for his direct, observational work. Snyder named his oldest son Kai, and I instantly loved that name. Short but very strong. A clean and rather simple sound. A look that’s a bit exotic. And Kai was born in 1968, just like me. Snyder wrote a number of poems mentioning Kai, but this one I now appreciate fully:Not Leaving the House
When Kai is born
I quit going out
Hang around the kitchen – make cornbread
Let nobody in.
Mail is flat.
Masa lies on her side, Kai sighs,
Non washes and sweeps
We sit and watch
Masa nurse, and drink green tea.
Navajo turquoise beads over the bed
A peacock tail feather at the head
A badger pelt from Nagano-ken
For a mattress; under the sheet;
A pot of yogurt setting
Under the blankets, at his feet.
Masa, Kai,
And Non, our friend
In the garden light reflected in
Not leaving the house.
From dawn till late at night
making a new world of ourselves
around this life.
I filed the name Kai away in my brain and scribbled it on the mandatory list of baby names that every high school girl keeps in a grubby notebook.
Cut to my freshman year of college. One of the deans of the college had named his son Kai, and this Kai lived in a room across the hall from my room. My love of the name floated up from my literary and high school memories; it was cool that I had met a Kai in the real world.
Cut to the months of my pregnancy. R and I made out separate lists of baby names and adjusted them over the trimesters. I read from my grubby old list and added new names to make my master list. We both looked through baby name books (thank you, Karin and Jamie!!). And at the beginning of October we had a "name powwow" and came up with what to take to the hospital. We didn’t know the sex of the baby, so we agreed on both boy and girl names. We actually had just one girl name, but I was quite certain that we wouldn’t need it. (For most of my pregnancy I felt that the baby was a boy.)
We decided on three boy names and ranked them in a loose order. Desmond was at the top (and I had thought of the baby as Desmond through the whole pregnancy, although we called the baby "Crumbcake" as a working title). Kai was a close second, and Maxfield was next. R insisted that we needed to see the baby first before picking a name, and a number of my other friends agreed. A few friends even told me that they had switched their name picks completely once seeing their baby. I was skeptical and really thought that Desmond was it, but I was willing to be open about it and see the kid first.
Cut to me on Halloween (no pun intended), flat on my back in the OR getting an unexpected C-section. (ARGH!! Don’t ask!) The anesthesiologist put up a mirror for me to see my baby making its way into the world. I saw the head of dark hair and little guy face and knew it was a boy before the surgeon even said the words. Then, in what seemed like the next instant, R was holding my son by my side. I looked into the baby’s eyes and knew right then that he was not a Desmond at all. He was a Kai.
In my hospital room after the birth, R and I spent hours with our son, and a few times every hour we would say to each other, "He just isn’t a Desmond, really, is he? He’s a Kai." I had thought of my son as Desmond for so long and we so liked the name that we agreed to use it as his middle name. Then we put my father’s name next (Ralph), my father being the cool guy that he is. So after letting his full name gel, knowing we had it right, we filled out the hospital paperwork and told family and friends that we had welcomed Kai into the world.
We love the name Kai for the reasons I mentioned previously but also for what the name means in different languages: As we understand it, after reading through many sources and books:
* Kai is Hawaiian (perhaps also Japanese) for "ocean" or "moving sea": This is perfect for him because he never stopped moving inside me during his 9 months. He bounced around during his ultrasounds and he rarely took a break from forcefully pushing me. The skin on my midsection undulated day in and day out.
* Kai is Navajo for "willow tree": A great-great grandmother of R’s was Native American, and I am a bit of a tree-hugging hippie.
* Kai is Scandinavian for "earth": R’s mother’s father had Scandinavian roots, and "earth" is just cool as a meaning. Total nature.
* Kai is Japanese for many things, apparently, but it can represent ideas like "forgiveness" and "to amend" or "reform" (in Chinese, potentially "change"): Kai arrived right when he was meant to. He has made me whole.
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