Welcome Henry Kai Tien....why we chose this name

We didn't mean to delay announcing his name. It's been his name for months. We kind of think of it as an old person's name, but we think it's an adorable baby name. We have been saying it aloud to trial it so much, that now it seems impossible to name him anything else, even if I still say "Really, his name is Henry??!!" Also, I think the Henry I've been picturing has black hair (see below)....and this baby has some kind of blonde-red hair!! WHAT? Crazy! So we still like the name, I just needed some time to try out this name on the real baby, the (right now) non Chinese looking baby, and adjust my mental image. But here is some info on how we originally came up with his name.

Henry: *I fell in love with a character in a book I read called “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet”, by Jamie Ford . Henry was a 12-14 year old Chinese boy for most of the book which was set in WW2 Seattle. He found himself stuck between his conservative parents and a dear friend who happened to be Japanese-American . I loved Henry’s integrity, his courage, his quiet rebellion, his pure heart and his humanness. We also meet him as an old man in the rest of the book, and I loved him as an old man too!

*While we were looking for popular names (and kind of trying to avoid them), we looked at the Washington State 100 most popular names for 2009 and 2010. (They still didn't have 2011 posted yet). For both years, Henry was the exact same ranking as Lucy in popularity. Spooky.

*The name itself means “ruler of the house” and while we don’t want him to be “ruler” of THIS house, it kind of goes along with him being born in the Chinese year of the Dragon. “The role of leader is the only one the Dragon wants, the better from which to give orders and be king of the hill”. This is not a reason for his name, just a tidbit of Chinese zodiac belief. Oh and speaking of Chinese tradition, some numbers are lucky, usually based on how they sound similar to other words: The word for "eight" sounds similar to the word which means "prosper" or "wealth". If you recall the olympics in Beijing started on August 8, 2008 (8.8.08). Anyway, Henry weighed 8 pounds, 8.8 ounces at birth!! WOW!!!!

Kai: You may know/remember that Lucy’s middle name is Mei. It’s Chinese for beautiful, but it sounds like May (her birth month) or Mae, both English sounding names too. We wanted to pick a middle name that sounded American but had some Chinese characteristic as well. (Having the same number of letters was just a mathematical bonus!) Kai is commonly known to be Hawaiian, but it is also Chinese for “triumphant” or “victorious”. If he doesn’t like using the name Henry as a teenager, maybe he will like going by Kai?!