Kaiya

We think we may have figured this one out. All the baby naming websites out there provide erroneous information about Kaiya being the Japanese name for “forgiveness”. This is inaccurate. The Japanese word for forgiveness is 許し and would sound like “yurushi” to the English ear. It’s perfectly reasonable to assign Kaiya a Japanese origin since there are indeed kanji for each of the name’s components: i.e., “kai” + “ya”. So what are kanji exactly? Well, simply speaking, it’s a system of writing used by the Japanese and borrowed from Chinese characters. Each character has multiple meanings and so deciphering each kanji depends on the written context in which it is used. Also, each kanji in Japanese writing translates to very specific sounds in English. Although it’s much more complicated than this, but to simplify things, we’ve discovered possible kanji for each element of the name Kaiya in Japanese. Kai could have the following meanings: 佳 (excellent), 海 (sea), 介 (mediate), 皆 (everyone), 街 (street), 会 (meeting), 快 (comfort), 凱 (victory song), or 貝 (shellfish); while Ya could mean 矢 (arrow), 夜 (night), 八 (eight), 也 (sum of money), 哉 (question mark), 野 (field), 椰 (coconut) or 辞 (dictionary). You could combine the two most appealing kanji to form your own meaning, but in essence you’d be making up a name that doesn’t exist in Japanese. In other words, Kaiya is not really a Japanese name. If you’re interested in a real Japanese name for a baby girl, then consider K names like Katsumi (victorious beauty), Keiko (blessed child), Kiyoko (pure child) or Kumiko (long-lived, beautiful child). As a newly coined name, Kaiya could have also been inspired by Kai (the Hawaiian word for “sea”) or the female names Kaia and Kaya. Kaiya is used with relatively rare frequency in Canada, the United States and Australia. In Australia, the name is used more on baby boys, perhaps from the aboriginal word “kaiya” which was a type of spear used among the indigenous Wik-Mungknh people.