Kai's Name

We have had lots of comments and questions about Kai's name as it is not a name that many people have heard. Some of the questions we have had are:

1) How do you pronounce Kai? Kai rhymes with each word in these sentences: "Hi, shy guy! Buy my Thai tie-dye tie!"

2) What does Kai mean? Well, Kai has numerous meanings, depending on the language you take the meaning from:

Kai is a Latin name meaning “rejoice,” from “gaudare.”
Kai is also a Finnish name meaning "rejoice".
Kai is a Dutch name meaning "king".
Kai is known in Germany as a Northern European name that means "warrior" or "fighter".
In Burmese, Kai means "strong" or "unbreakable".
Kai is a Hawaiian name meaning “ocean.”
Kai comes from an English surname meaning “keeper of the keys.”
Kai comes from the Scottish origin meaning "fire".
In Chinese, Kai has many meanings, two of which are "triumphant and victorious" or "joyful and happy."
The phrase "kai kai kai kai" is used to teach Thai children the tonalities of the language. When each "kai" is pronounced properly it means, "Who sells chicken eggs?"
Kai is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series.

3) Is Kai an English name? Yes and no. As seen above, the origin of Kai can come from several languages. But, most names we use in the US were technically not "English" names originally. Taking our family for example, Michelle is of French or Hebrew origin, Matthew is of Hebrew origin, and Vera is of Slavic or Latin origin.

4) Is Kai a Chinese name? Yes and no. We did not choose it because it can be used as a Chinese name, but it did make choosing Kai's Chinese name easier. We have decided to use the character meaning "joyful" or "happy" (恺) as one character of his Chinese name (Chinese names are a combination of either two or three characters). Our surname in Chinese is 张 ("zhang", pronounced "jong"), so Kai's full name in Chinese is 张恺.

5) Why have I never heard the name Kai? Unlike Vera, who has an "old lady" name, Kai truly has a "little boy" name. Here's a random piece of information for you. Vera went out of the Social Security Administration's list of top 1000 names in 1983. Kai first entered the list in 1979 and has slowly worked its way up the list since then. Last year it was the 254th most popular baby boy name in the U.S., with 1,370 newborn boys named Kai.

6) How did you choose the middle name Joseph? In the Bible, the story of Joseph is most definitely my favorite (and Matt really likes it as well), so we decided to use it as a middle name.

Now you know everything you ever wanted to know about our son's name!