It’s hard to come up with a name. It carries weight, hope, and dreams. In ancient times, it reflected the moment of the times. It will be what she’ll be called, it’s our first gift to her.

Her English name means “Pure”

• Undivided Devotion: unadulterated or unmixed. Focused, not split.
• Free from Guile: honesty, sincerity, and a lack of deceit or hypocrisy.
• Continuous Pursuit: It does not mean perfection, but rather a sincere pursuit of it

Like her brother, we wanted her name to reflect her parents by including our first initials in the name. Since our first started with a L, we tried to see if we could land on a K. We did not realizes the Kardashians had taken so many K with L names! Interestingly, the 2 names that we narrowed down to at the very end were the first 2 names that my wife had written out on our very first brainstorm of names early in the pregnancy. Her name is also a derivation of ‘Caleb’ which was the name we almost went with for our first. It was a lot harder to land on her name but through it all we went back to the 1st name we had written down.

Her Chinese Name:

Her Chinese name is 樂心 (Lok Sum) and like her brother, there’s some meaning to the name.

The character 樂, which means ‘happy’ or ‘joyous’, is a generational character and so both our children will have this in their name (more explanation in Part 1).

The phrase “快樂的心” means a ‘happy heart’ or a ‘heart of joy’. My last name can be used to mean “a lot of ” as in 許多, so her full Chinese name can come to mean ‘a heart full of joy’. Add in her English name and it means “A heart full of pure joy”.  Our dream for this child.

Her mother’s Chinese name also has a 心 and I have always said it was K’s heart that drew me to pursue her. My hope is that my daughter’s heart reflects the same characteristics of her mother.

Her name reflects the Asian American identity that we as parents have had to navigate and she will navigate as well. Her blended cultural name reflects our deepest hope and desires for this child where real joy is found in deep deep connection with self, family, this world and in the wholeness that comes from knowing that she is beloved.

Together, her brother and her name are 樂善 and 樂心.  Their unique characters combine 善 + 心 = ‘kindness’. Our collective hope for our children both to each other, to their parents, and to their future communities/families.

Somehow we’ve managed to have a son who’s middle initials (LS) gives a nod to a certain light-bringer to the galaxy far far away, and a daughter who’s middle initials (LS) mirrors a certain sister, princess, general. That makes me their…Vader?