Choosing a name for your child is genuinely a challenging task. Once decided, it becomes the name called upon them for a lifetime, raising concerns about its potential impact. With this in mind, we naturally spent a lot of time pondering, wanting to gift them the best possible name.

The challenge lies in the fact that there isn’t a definitive guideline on what constitutes a good name. Without an absolute criteria, the approach to naming differs from one parent to another. Some give purely native Korean names like 'Nuri' or 'Danbi.' Others choose names of admired celebrities, historical figures, or biblical characters, while some consult fortune tellers to create a name based on the child’s birth chart. I also learned that there's a study called onomastics concerned with naming.

Ultimately, it all springs from the desire for their child to thrive. Like many parents, my wife and I hoped to gift our child a name rich with meaning. We experimented with names incorporating generational markers from our family tree, aligned them alphabetically with our surname, and even looked up baby name rankings to see what others chose. During this process, we revisited our child’s prenatal name.

Our child's prenatal name was 'Sunshine', inspired during a walk along the Han River early in the pregnancy when sunlight pouring from the sky was stunningly beautiful. In this name, we harbored hopes for our child to shine beautifully like that sunlight, a sentiment we wanted to intertwine with their official name. So we searched the Supreme Court’s list of names and found Nayeon, which means "to shine beautifully"—‘Na’(娜) for beautiful, ‘Yeon’(娫) for shining. It was as if our feelings for our child crystallized into words.

Now, a few tens of days past the child's birth, this name has become a commonplace word we utter dozens of times a day to refer to her. It feels so natural now, as if she’s always been Nayeon. The meaning behind the name is no longer a conscious thought. It's just Nayeon. Years later, when she grows aware of her name, she may not contemplate its significance.

But there will come a day, spurred by some catalyst, when she asks either me or my wife about its meaning. I'm genuinely curious about her reaction when she hears the story and the meaning entwined with 'Sunshine'. I hope she will embrace it.