my name
Back in the late summer of 2004, I joined a gaming site and chose 'kai' for my username. I never capitalize it. Since then, I've pretty much been 'kai' online, for the purposes of blogging and gaming. This journal was created well before I began using that name, and believe me, I've thought several times of going ahead and changing it over for El-Jay as well.
An online friend of mine only refers to me as 'Karen' when the USPS has to be involved. Several members of the anime meetup (on more than one occasion) have simply smirked and shaken their heads when I've told them that, no really, they can call me Karen. "Nah," they say, "you're kai."
'Karen', while it's great and all, has never seemed to fit me. Not 100%. It's a great name, and I go to pieces when the kids I work with call me 'Kawen', but there's just always been something about it that wasn't quite right.
I like 'kai'. It's sharp and monosyllabic. It's got that nice, full, throat-rasp 'k' sound.
So I looked it up. Apparently, 'Kai' is usually a male name, but it's become more common among females lately. It's of Welsh, Scandanavian, and Greek origin (or so Wikipedia says), and means "keeper of the keys; earth". It's a variant of Kay, which was the name of one of the Knights of the Round Table and Arthur's foster-brother. Kai is also a Polynesian/Hawaiian/Japanese word that seems to mean "big water/the ocean/the sea". In Burmese it means "strong, unbreakable". Kai is the word for "pine tree" in Hopi and "willow" in Navajo.
I researched the Welsh background of the name a little more and found out that it's a version of 'Caius', an alternate form of 'Gaius', a Latin name that means "rejoice". Supposedly there's some Scottish roots, too, and in that case it means "fire" or "fiery".
Here's a really interesting bit: even though the name Kai has been masculine until recently, it's been unisex in Hawaiian for a long time. Also, considering the meanings, earth and water are typically considered 'female' elements.
...That's a lot of random information, and some of it probably only counts as trivia. I, on the other hand, find it incredibly interesting that so many of these meanings 'feel right' to me. Karen is my given name, and I'm rather attached to it, but I have to say that I think 'kai' might just be my chosen name.
An online friend of mine only refers to me as 'Karen' when the USPS has to be involved. Several members of the anime meetup (on more than one occasion) have simply smirked and shaken their heads when I've told them that, no really, they can call me Karen. "Nah," they say, "you're kai."
'Karen', while it's great and all, has never seemed to fit me. Not 100%. It's a great name, and I go to pieces when the kids I work with call me 'Kawen', but there's just always been something about it that wasn't quite right.
I like 'kai'. It's sharp and monosyllabic. It's got that nice, full, throat-rasp 'k' sound.
So I looked it up. Apparently, 'Kai' is usually a male name, but it's become more common among females lately. It's of Welsh, Scandanavian, and Greek origin (or so Wikipedia says), and means "keeper of the keys; earth". It's a variant of Kay, which was the name of one of the Knights of the Round Table and Arthur's foster-brother. Kai is also a Polynesian/Hawaiian/Japanese word that seems to mean "big water/the ocean/the sea". In Burmese it means "strong, unbreakable". Kai is the word for "pine tree" in Hopi and "willow" in Navajo.
I researched the Welsh background of the name a little more and found out that it's a version of 'Caius', an alternate form of 'Gaius', a Latin name that means "rejoice". Supposedly there's some Scottish roots, too, and in that case it means "fire" or "fiery".
Here's a really interesting bit: even though the name Kai has been masculine until recently, it's been unisex in Hawaiian for a long time. Also, considering the meanings, earth and water are typically considered 'female' elements.
...That's a lot of random information, and some of it probably only counts as trivia. I, on the other hand, find it incredibly interesting that so many of these meanings 'feel right' to me. Karen is my given name, and I'm rather attached to it, but I have to say that I think 'kai' might just be my chosen name.