In my last post I promised you the gripping tale of 'How Ms. Amused and I got our Korean names.'
So here we go:
As most of you probably know by now, all of my students have English names as well as their own Korean ones. So it seemed perfectly logical to them that Kate Teacher would also have both an English and a Korean name. Every five or six weeks (which seems to be their short term memory span) they would ask for my Korean name. Usually I just distracted them by announcing that I already have two names, an English one and an Irish one. Cue eyes bugging out in surprise and five minutes of hilarity as I taught them how to pronounce 'Cait ni Grada'.
Then one day in October, during a class with two of my nine year olds, I was asked once again for my Korean name. Only this time they impressed the hell out of me first by remembering my Irish name AND PRONOUNCING IT CORRECTLY!!!
In a moment of whimsy I said, "I don't have a Korean name. You guys think of one for me!"
They were slightly taken aback by this but rallied quickly and after trying out a few suggestions settled on
이수현 (Lee Su Hyun). Lacking any frame of reference whatsoever, all I could think was that it sounded like a very pretty name, and leave it at that.
Skip forward six weeks to a Thursday evening in November. I got a text from Sister Dearest excitedly announcing: "My kids gave me a Korean name, 이수진 (Lee Su Jin)! Isn't it pretty?!"
I was gobsmacked! I called her immediately to squeal that by some gigantic fluke, our two different sets of students had somehow managed to give us sister names! 아싸! (Woohoo!)
'Lee' is the family name, 'Su' is our common sibling name and 'Hyun' and 'Jin' are just for us.
We hit the internet to hunt down some translations but this proved to be a tricky business. This is because what your name means, depends on how it is written in Hanja, Chinese characters.
For example, the Chinese name Lin Do Jong, depending on how it is written, can mean either 'Long held wish' or 'Long held grudge'. Bit of a difference!
Ms.Amused and I haven't even seen our names in their various Hanja forms, much less chosen one!
Instead we rather arbitrarily picked the first translations that we liked.
Therefore we landed on 'Perfect Virtue' for Su Hyun, (yours truly) and 'Perfect Truth' for Su Jin (Ms.Amused).
My name feels delightfully apropriate to me because my English name, 'Katherine' means 'pure'. It seems to me that purity and virtue make pretty good companions.
So nowadays, when my kids ask me my Korean name, I get the infinite pleasure of watching them grin and giggle when I answer:
제 한국 이름은 이수현 입니다! (My Korean name is Lee Su Hyun!)
Next post: Why King Sejeon is the cat's pyjamas!
So here we go:
As most of you probably know by now, all of my students have English names as well as their own Korean ones. So it seemed perfectly logical to them that Kate Teacher would also have both an English and a Korean name. Every five or six weeks (which seems to be their short term memory span) they would ask for my Korean name. Usually I just distracted them by announcing that I already have two names, an English one and an Irish one. Cue eyes bugging out in surprise and five minutes of hilarity as I taught them how to pronounce 'Cait ni Grada'.
Then one day in October, during a class with two of my nine year olds, I was asked once again for my Korean name. Only this time they impressed the hell out of me first by remembering my Irish name AND PRONOUNCING IT CORRECTLY!!!
In a moment of whimsy I said, "I don't have a Korean name. You guys think of one for me!"
They were slightly taken aback by this but rallied quickly and after trying out a few suggestions settled on
이수현 (Lee Su Hyun). Lacking any frame of reference whatsoever, all I could think was that it sounded like a very pretty name, and leave it at that.
Skip forward six weeks to a Thursday evening in November. I got a text from Sister Dearest excitedly announcing: "My kids gave me a Korean name, 이수진 (Lee Su Jin)! Isn't it pretty?!"
I was gobsmacked! I called her immediately to squeal that by some gigantic fluke, our two different sets of students had somehow managed to give us sister names! 아싸! (Woohoo!)
'Lee' is the family name, 'Su' is our common sibling name and 'Hyun' and 'Jin' are just for us.
We hit the internet to hunt down some translations but this proved to be a tricky business. This is because what your name means, depends on how it is written in Hanja, Chinese characters.
For example, the Chinese name Lin Do Jong, depending on how it is written, can mean either 'Long held wish' or 'Long held grudge'. Bit of a difference!
Ms.Amused and I haven't even seen our names in their various Hanja forms, much less chosen one!
Instead we rather arbitrarily picked the first translations that we liked.
Therefore we landed on 'Perfect Virtue' for Su Hyun, (yours truly) and 'Perfect Truth' for Su Jin (Ms.Amused).
My name feels delightfully apropriate to me because my English name, 'Katherine' means 'pure'. It seems to me that purity and virtue make pretty good companions.
So nowadays, when my kids ask me my Korean name, I get the infinite pleasure of watching them grin and giggle when I answer:
제 한국 이름은 이수현 입니다! (My Korean name is Lee Su Hyun!)
Next post: Why King Sejeon is the cat's pyjamas!
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