Aiko

Aiko combines the Japanese characters for love and child, a name that translates directly as beloved or love-child in its most literal reading. It belongs most famously to Princess Aiko, the only daughter of Japan's Emperor Naruhito, whose 2001 birth briefly prompted a national conversation about imperial succession. Before her, the pioneering photographer Aiko Yoshioka made the name familiar in artistic circles. Three vowel-forward syllables open and close without ever tightening, the sound as clear as a bell at dusk. A name as much given as granted, tenderness written into its first syllable. Soft, bright, quietly imperial.