“Clumpo” was used as a way not to get attached to Clumpo in case he didn’t come to term. The first 3 months are a precarious time. Attaching a name to the little guy too quickly and then having the worst happen would make the situation more difficult to handle. So, we went with Clumpo, because it was a little clump of rapidly reproducing cells.

I am getting afraid now because we’ve been using the name Clumpo for a full 6 months. Clumpo is “Clumpo” in my mind. Yet, Clumpo isn’t really a suitable name for much of anything. Maybe some 1950’s grease coagulant, but certainly not anything living.

My mom shared a very sentimental gift with me – a diary that she wrote when she was pregnant with me. I was born on September 18th, 1982. An entry on March 15th, 1982 makes mention of “either Elijah or Elias” as my name. We may be a bit behind the naming curve in this case.

The name is a complicated issue due to Japan’s naming system and America’s naming system. Japan doesn’t do middle names.
When I fill out documents in Japan, I never quite know where to put my middle name. On my gym card, I put “Wendlick, Eli” down as my name, and it actually got cut off. Most systems in Japan are made for names written in Kanji, which don’t often extend past two characters. Clumpo is probably going to go by entirely different names depending on the country.
We are thinking Japanese-y first name and my last name in Japan, then Japanese-y first name, very English middle name, and my last name for America. Pronunciation is going to make this a bitch though.

For the name, V is off the table immediately, because it would have to become a B sound in Japanese. R/L aren’t a good option, since Japanese has a sound in between the two which English doesn’t have, and Japanese doesn’t have any way of differentiating either the hard R or hard L sounds. Something like “Leena” would work ok, but in Japanese it would be the (R/L)eena sound. Japanese also doesn’t have a good way of expressing some vowels like the ‘a’ in “apple”, and the only consonant that words end with is ‘n’. Adding another layer of complexity is picking a name that kids won’t make fun of, so my first round picks of “Pubert“, “Slymenstra”, “L’Monjello”, “O’Ranjello”, “Sha’Dynasty”, and “L’Carpetron Dookmarriot” aren’t viable. So…nothing related to bodily functions or containing an apostrophe.

We are going to have to put a lot of thought into this, otherwise your grandson/nephew/little homie is going to keep being called Clumpo.