My husband is a fluent
Japanese speaker and he immediately flipped to the Japanese section. He was disturbed to find the
name Yemyo listed as a Japanese name. It is not, or if it is then it is archaic or made up.

He
looked up several common Japanese names and found that you had Yasuo, Yasutaro, Yojiro, Yoshiaki,
Yoshirobu etc. listed as Japanese with "unknown origin". These names are extremely common Japanese
names. You could find them in any Japanese baby name book, or even ask a Japanese person what they
mean. Yojiro, for example, means "fourth son".

Then he saw that you had listed Yukio as
"Hebrew/Japanese" origin. With a definition of "God will nourish". It is very possible that Yukio
DOES mean that in Hebrew, (I don't speak it so I don't know) but it does not mean that it Japanese.
Japanese and Hebrew have no common denominator. There aren't words in Japanese that mean the same
thing in Hebrew. I haven't looked it up in a dictionary, but Yukio possibly means "Brave One".
Perhaps a child with a Japanese/Hebrew parent combination named their child Yukio. This does not
make the name Japanese/Hebrew.

You have to understand that my husband and I are not holding
ourselves up as name experts, or even language experts. If, however, a casual reading of just one
section brings up this many (possible) errors it put the rest of the names in question.

My
concern is threefold: 1. The authors didn't seem to do much research to find definitions for common
names that they didn't know. (Asking a Japanese aquaintance, posting to a Japanese Newsgroup or
buying a Japanese baby name book etc.)

2. The authors MIGHT have (it is unclear) said that a
name (like Yemyo) is a "Japanese" name because a Japanese parent named their child that. Having
someone who is of Japanese (or Italian, or Jewish etc.) heritage make up a name does not make that
name Japanese, Italian or Jewish, in my opinion.

3. The authors MIGHT have (it is unclear) not
checked up on what a parent said the definition of a name is. If I tell you an unusual name, and
then I tell you the definition of it, it is still YOUR responsibility to check the accuracy of the
name before you publish a book.

Obviously this is just my opinion. The names are interesting and
unusual but I wish that I felt that I could "trust" it more.

Jen