Re: Name barbarisms

On Wed, 16 May 2001, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> > It's more like /gjVN/.
>
> Well, it's certainly counter-intuitive.  But it does seem that once it's
> explained, it shouldn't be hard to remember.
<wry g>  In the older transliteration it "should be" Kyeong, or Gyeong in
the newer, but that only works for people who already know Korean
transliteration.

The dumber one is how the immigration officer decided to transliterate my
mom's name, /tSVn ok sVn/ (soft *not* ssang-sieut s).  Even though her
fmaily name and the second part of her given name have the same vowel,
the officer proclaimed that it should be "Chun, Ok Seon."

Maybe this just runs in the family.  Though if I ever have kids, they're
getting nice happy names that Americans can get their mouths around *and*
nice happy *properly and consistently transliterated* Korean names that
Koreans can get their mouths around.  (My now-fiancé is half-German, but
the German side of his family will just have to deal, and no, there is
NOT going to be a 3rd or 4th Charles or Albert or Joseph living, darnit,
there's already enough name-confusion.)

YHL

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