Re: OT: Conlangea Dreaming

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> Simple.  "Ee" or "I" looks Very Strange as a surname in American
> English (I bet British and Australian and Indian and other Englishes,
> too), so Koreans often transliterate /i/ as Rhee, Lee, Li, Yi, Yee
But why?  Ee is very easy to pronounce for English-speakers, so why
would they change it?  Most immigrants who changed their names were
either "translation", like Müller -> Miller, or changing a
hard-to-pronounce-for-English-speakers name to an easier one.  Yee or Yi
I could see, but the /l/ is hard to see.