Niko the Penguin

If you follow me on twitter or Facebook, I’ve hinted at exciting changes that I’ve been working on and today I’m ready to reveal the first of many. I started My Dear Darling selling just one personalizable original penguin plush and with that, I explained the reason why I didn’t give the penguin a name was because I wanted the new penguin owner to name him. But over two years have passed and I’ve changed my mind. My penguin wants a name! He deserves a name, don’t you think? 🙂 So after lots and lots of searching, I’ve found the one!

I started out looking at popular British butler-esque names. Lol, I know, random right? But how can you not like Alfred, Winston, or Edwin for a penguin? 🙂 But every time I looked at my penguin and repeated English names, I realized my penguin ain’t British. I searched around some more and ended up looking through Japanese names. Nothing stood out and I was stumped. I went back asking myself why I started making penguins in the first place and BAM it came to me: smiles! I wanted to make penguin plushies in hopes of bringing smiles to others. I finally came up with the name Niko!

“Niko-niko” is a Japanese onomatopoeia that describes a smile. If you didn’t know, I’m Japanese (my last name is Vietnamese because I’m married to a Pham) so it was natural for me to give my original plush-baby a name taken from a Japanese word. I was just trying too hard with the butler names. Maybe I can name another character Winston… no? 😉

I’m so excited and I hope you like his name too! What do you think of Niko the Penguin?