Re: Moi, le Kou (was: verbs = nouns?)

-----Original Message-----
From: DOUGLAS KOLLER <LAOKOU@...>
To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU <CONLANG@...>
Date: Friday, January 12, 2001 1:09 PM
Subject: Re: Moi, le Kou (was: verbs = nouns?)


>From: "Yoon Ha Lee"
>
>> Still, it must be such a
>> lovely thing to be able to choose one's own characters
>
>The power is intoxicating! :) (And *any*thing is better than  Dao4ge2la1si1
>Ke1le4.) My kvetching about governmental authorities aside, once the name
>clicked into place, it really began to "work" in ways that previous Chinese
>name attempts could never have hoped to approach. The name was I and I was
>it.
<laugh>  Whereas in French class, everyone else got a reasonable "French
name," but I got dubbed "Yvonne" out of desperation, and it never quite
clicked.  OTOH, I think some book-of-names said it means "archer," and I
actually finally learned archery last spring...<G>

>Anyway, my Japanese tutor in Japan was named "Tomoko" and she switched the
>"Tomo" part to a character which she found more to her temperament and/or
>liking. I doubt she was able to play with that on official documents, but
>everyone who knew her knew her as her self-created name (well, maybe Mom
and
>Dad went by the old rules). I don't speak Korean, but I would imagine "Ha"
>has oodles of character possibilities; don't tell the 'rents and pick one
>that works for you :)
I'm sure it does, somewhere.  :-p  I'll look into it someday.  I would love
to be able to *write* a Chinese character instead of *drawing* it
awkwardly...practice....

YHL