Turtle Butt

Finally, I can say it was all worth it. After two years in Japan, I can at least go home with no regrets. Sure, I got married and will be a father in less than two months, but this is big.

I have a student... in elementary school... and his name... is Turtle Butt. Well, that sounds a bit too much like the name of a Native American in some tasteless jokes I've heard. Actually, his name is Kouta Kamejiri. Kouta is his first name. Who knows what it means. It doesn't matter. The last name is what we're looking at here. Kamejiri. Kame means turtle or tortoise, and shiri means ass or butt. Put them together, a little Japanese phonetics turns the "sh" to "j," and there it is: Kamejiri. Turtle-butt.

I wonder if the Japanese find this as hilarious as I do. Probably not. They're totally obsessed with character meaning when it comes to first names. [Trust me, I know this all too well. My wife and I had decided on a name for our baby, and then she started having second thoughts because she couldn't find a character she liked. Meh.] Half the boys in Japan have the character for big and strong in their name. But when it comes to last names, like Turtle-butt, no one seems to think about the meaning. In fact, I've joked with people about the meaning of their names and they say, "No, no, there's no meaning. Just a name." Sure. Maybe if the characters meant something more exotic than "Moat Field" (my wife's name) or "Mountain Mouth," they'd be a little more forthcoming. When your name means "In the middle of the field" (Nakada), it's not hard to tell what your ancestors did for a living (hint: they weren't samurai).

I did a web search for Turtle-butt in Japanese to see how common a name it is. 12,800 hits. Sibble had about 18,000. Must not be very common. I have a feeling it's a hilarious name, even in Japanese, and I'm glad I found it before I left Japan.