What's in a Name?

Names seem to be an interesting topic lately. In our training today, we were asked to share the story of our names: why our parents chose them, what significance they may have. This was my little blurb:

My name is Lauren April. I suppose my mom and my dad chose to give me the middle name April because yes, I was born in April, but both of my parents were also born in April; My birthday is 20 days after my mom's and exactly 1 week after my dad's. While my sister was born at 10:10 on 12/12, my mom was 26 when I was born on the 26th; number repetition seems to be our thing, but that's a tangent. My first name doesn't seem to have any particular significance to my family. I know that I was going to be named Lanie, but because my grandparents have pronunciation issues, my parents didn't want them calling me "Rainy April." I think it would have been cute, but Lanie would have been far too cutesy a name for me. Despite the inner happiness I feel now, I've been weathered by a lot of teenage angst; as much as I would have loved to skip out on all of it, I think it's done a lot to bring me to the state I'm in today.

Last night, I also had a brief conversation with Wes about giving him a nifty Japanese name. It was a little thing, but I got into it quite a bit and stayed up until 1:30 reading common male names and sifting through the good ones. I did even more refining in the morning, leaving little time to prepare for the day. Having it on my mind, I found the training discussion amusing. As a note, here are some of the most interesting ones I came up with, accompanied by meanings:

Hideki: splendid opportunity
Hiroki: abundant joy/strength
Hotaka: step by step, derived from the name of the tallest mountain in the Japanese Alps
Kunio: countryman
Masaki: elegant tree
Masuyo: increase the world
Michio: man on the right path
Mikio: tree trunk man
Minori: beautiful harbor
Mitsuru: full, growing
Naoki: honest tree
Takumi: artisan
Tetsuya: become iron, clear evening
Tomio: treasured man
Toshio: alert, genius, valued man

Last names were a completely separate beast that I'd never thought much about before. I'd realized that surnames were most commonly comprised of two kanji, an adjective and a noun, or sometimes two nouns with one used to describe the other. Some of the cooler ones I found:

Nouns:
hama: beach
shima: island
to: gate
taki: waterfall

Adjectives:
taka: high
tomi: rich
naga: eternal
fuku: lucky

Nouns as Adjectives:
moto: origin
guchi: mouth, entry
kuma: bear
(I had to include kuma in honor of the Japanese class ^_^)

You can really make some wonderful names with these simple combinations. For example, Minori Takimoto would mean beautiful harbor at the origin of a waterfall. Pretty neat in my opinion. More food for thought. Tabete kudasai. (Eat it!)