Hello Kitty, qu'est-ce que c'est?

I have a tendency to want to address deeply philosophical questions in this blog, such as the question that popped into my head as I sat down at my computer this evening:

How did Hello Kitty get her name?

Furthermore, is the name meant to signify:

1. First name "Hello," surname "Kitty" OR
2. First name "Kitty," surname "Hello" OR
3. A greeting that accompanies this cute little nameless cat everywhere?

With these burning semantic issues at stake, I felt it was my duty to turn to the great Wikipedia oracle for some answers. Here's what I was able to glean from its "Hello Kitty" entry:

"Hello Kitty was given an English name because British culture was popular with Japanese girls at the time of her creation. Kitty's name came from one of the cats that Alice kept in the book Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll."

I should have known that with a character this wacky, Lewis Carroll had to be involved somehow. But reading on, I found that Hello Kitty lore gets even trippier. For example:

"When Hello Kitty's boyfriend "Dear Daniel" was created in 1999, designers took his name from the 1971 film, Melody, which starred Mark Lester as a character called Daniel, and features songs by the Bee Gees."

The BeeGees? What?!

The final odd pieces of information I learned about Hello Kitty during my brief foray into her strange and wondrous history this evening is that, as of 2004, Hello Kitty has a pet cat named Charmmy Kitty (a gift from her father) and also a pet hamster named Sugar (a gift from Dear Daniel). A cat with a hamster? Well...OK. But a cat with a cat? Now we're talking crazy talk.

I've always been a Hello Kitty fan, but it seems to me that she's just one of those wonders of the universe that is better left uninvestigated. Because otherwise, it's all too complex. Whew.