Marx and Sadie’s baby is named Naomi, a name that reflects her parents’ heritage because it has completely distinct Japanese and Hebrew roots. Etymologically, it’s a fascinating, rare coincidence that two names could develop completely independently but have the exact same romanization. Most English speakers are familiar with the Hebrew version of Naomi, but the Japanese version is actually pronounced closer to two syllables, like “now-mee” (even though it uses three morae, Na-o-mi).
To be honest, it’s probably the only clever detail in the book that the author does not immediately spell out for the reader and seemingly congratulate herself for knowing. That was one of my biggest criticisms of the book overall.
While we’re on the subject, I couldn’t buy that Marx Watanabe could realistically be the name of a person who grew up in Japan in the 90s. It’s implied he was named by his father, a Japanese economics professor, but I don’t think that a Japanese parent would saddle their kid with that. The character is half-Korean living in Japan, which would already present some difficulties due to racial tension that still exists today. A strange name would draw even more attention to him and mark him as “the foreigner” wherever he goes. Marx can only be spelled in katakana (the script used for loan words) as Marukusu, whereas everyone else around him would have names using traditional Japanese characters (kanji).
by TulipSamurai