His Name

Beckett

(BEH-kit)

English origin

Meanings: stream, dweller near the brook, bee cottage

Significance to us – none

Yoshio

(YOH-shee-oh)

Japanese origin

Meanings – righteous man, good man, number one, first born

Significance to us – Adam’s maternal grandfather was Yoshio “Sonny” Takami 

and Adam is named after him (Adam Wayne Yoshio Tolman).

 It is also the name Adam chose for his teriyaki sauce business, Yoshio’s Teriyaki.

In their family, the meaning of the name is interpreted to mean number one, as in first born son.

Naming a person is hard. It’s a lot of pressure. A person’s name defines them. It follows them their entire life. And for some reason, naming a boy seems a lot more difficult than naming a girl. It needs to be a strong name, not wimpy, not something that could also be a name for a girl.

When Adam and I started talking about first names for our boy, there were several factors that we took into account. First, we found ourselves steering away from names which belong to someone we already knew. Naturally, this eliminates A LOT of names, but it’s tough to imagine a name for your child if you already have preconceived notions about it. This is a big part of the reason that both of our children have unique or somewhat unusual names. Second, the name could not begin with C, D, or F. What?! That sounds crazy, you say? Yes, it is. I know. But, I once read a study (summarized here) that concluded that people whose names began with C, D, or F would find those grades less aversive and therefore strive less hard to avoid them. While there could be dozens of arguments against the validity of the study, it resonated deeply enough for me to choose to avoid all of those names altogether. (Yes, I know you think I’m crazy right now.)

So, with those two criteria in mind, we set out to find the perfect name for our son. We began by considering family names; Perry, Sonny, and several others, but none seemed quite right. Therefore, our next step was the most natural for folks in our generation – begin scouring the internet. We each spent hours poring over baby name lists. We’d write down our favorites, then pass the list to the other and cross out the names we didn’t like. “There was a weird kid in my second grade class with this name,” was a common reason for name elimination. We must have spent a good two weeks doing this. Names would be added and removed and added again. I was beginning to panic that we may never settle on a name and that our son would be known as “Moose” forever. In the end, it came down to two names; Beckett and Reece. Beckett won out because Reece (Reese) is also a girl’s name.

Beckett was traditionally a surname until just recently. Famous Becketts include Thomas Becket, 12th century Archbishop of Canterbury, Samuel Beckett, an Irish playwright, and Kate Beckett, one of the main characters of the popular TV show Castle. We were unaware of any of these Becketts when we chose the name for our son.

So, the name Beckett holds no true significance for us, except that it’s not a name of anyone we already know, it doesn’t begin with C, D, or F, and we both love it.

Now you also know why we have chosen to keep our children’s names to ourselves until they’re born. We each already have so many factors influencing our opinion of a name, it would just be too much to know that the name we had chosen was the name of some weird kid in your second grade class. As much as we value the opinions of our friends and family, naming our children was something we had to do on our own. And it seems folks are much less forthcoming with their opinions (especially negative) if the child has already been named.

His middle name, Yoshio, was sort of a given. There’s always sort of been an unspoken agreement that our kids’ middle names would be Japanese because that part of their heritage is very important to us. Yoshio was the natural choice for us given its history in Adam’s family.

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