Middle Names

My mom started what I guess you would call a tradition in our family - my siblings and I all have Japanese middle names. I always thought this was quite cool as a kid even though it took me a while to figure out how to both pronounce and say my own middle name. But I liked being a little different and having a cool meaning to my name (even though someone once asked me if I was named or conceived after the Japanese liqueur, Midori Melon - I wasn't).

In order from oldest to youngest, here are our middle names:
Elaine Yuko
Christopher Akira
Emily Saori
Anne Midori

My middle name means "green" in Japanese as I was named after Anne of Green Gables. I forget what the exact meanings of my siblings names are - Saori is something like "weaver of dreams" and Akira means "light" and I have no idea what Yuko mean (sorry Elaine). The meanings of the names can differ depending on what Kanji character (which is the Chinese character) is used to write it.

So I wanted to continue this tradition that my parents started and give Lucy a Japanese middle name (even though I know that some people don't give their daughters middle names because they expect that when they get married, they will use their maiden names as their middle names but I'll let Lucy decide if she wants to keep the Dayton cause I opted to drop my maiden name). We chose the name Mei even though I'm not sure how popular the name is in Japanese and that it might be more Chinese in origin. But my sister reminded me that one of the characters from this Japanese movie was named Mei (although I am not sure how Japanese people would spell it or if it was just a nickname for a longer Japanese name):By the way, I love this movie but Lucy isn't really named after that character, it was just a coincidence. I mostly liked the way Mei flowed after Lucy. But I do want Lucy to know that the meaning of her name is so I asked my mother and she told me that it depends on which kanji character is used to write the name. So I had my mom do some research is this is what she came up with:

未来 めい future
明衣 めい bright clothing
明 めい light
芽衣　めい sprout & clothing

Supposedly the last kanji is the most popular and I think that the kanji for "light" is also the same kanji that is used in my brother's middle name, Akira (I don't really know how that works seeing that Akira sounds nothing like Mei). There is also the option of just using the hiragana which is めい (which I believe is how Midori is written in Japanese - without a kanji). So many choices! Brandon likes "sprout" a lot because he thinks it's cool that a little "sprout" came from Midori or "green". And the kanji characters are very pretty too.

So I'm not sure which one we'll go with. It's not like a pressing issue since this isn't going on her birth certificate or Social Security card or anything but it might be nice hang a picture of her Japanese name in her room or scrapbook or something and to tell her when she is older what her name means. I didn't even think of what her first name meant but after looking it up, Lucy means light. And some other random information is that Lucy is a popular nickname in Russia for Tatyana which Brandon has taken to calling her. And weird other fact, the author of Anne of Green Gables is Lucy Maud Montgomery. Coincidence?