Yesterday, I wrote about baby and pet names, and today I want to talk more about names since I came across one very interesting post about Korean names. Here's the link to it.
http://blog.naver.com/kfaction/140119160743
here's the summary of the beginning of the post.
He found some pure Korean names that were used around the 7th century like Choomo, DahWooHwahnNo, SahSooRoo, MahRi etc. But because China was in power back then the government started to change the position names and the names of places to Chinese influenced names after Unified Silla (668-935 A.D.).
However, people kept their Korean names all the way up to the end of Joseon dynasty (1392-1897) . These are some examples of Korean names, Ilsoni, Nagne, NeutDongE, which means Helping hand, Wanderer, Late child respectively.
So to help you understand what he's getting at, this is how Chinese influenced names work.
This example is one of the common names in maybe my mom's generation '김 미 화 [Kim Mi Hwah]'
Kim is the family name and Mihwah is the first name.
'
Beauty' in
Korean is '
아름다움[Ah Reum Dah Woom]'. You may have seen this makeup shop when you were in Korea. '아리따움 [Aritaum]' is the same meaning as 'Beauty'.
美 This
Chinese character has a meaning and a sound to it. The meaning is '
beauty'. I don't know how it's read in Chinese but in Korean it's read as '
Mi' and if we write that down in Korean, it's written as '
미'.
And 'flower' in Korean is '꽃[GGoht]'
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| Park in Buchoen, Korea. (http://blog.naver.com/wkduddl0917/220364664527) |
花 This Chinese character means 'flower'. Koreans read it as 'Hwah' and that sound is written as '화' in Korean.
So if you put those two characters next to each other it becomes 美花. Koreans read is as 'Mi Hwah' and the sound is written in Korean as '미화' which means 'Beautiful flower'.
Although 'Beautiful flower' in Korean is actually '
아름다운 꽃[Ah Reum Dah Woon GGoht]' which could have been our name a long time ago along with
'일손이[Ilsoni]
(Helping hand)', '
나그네[Nageune]
(Wanderer)', '늦동이[NeutdongE] (Late child)'. Instead, our names were changed to Chinese influenced names, so it's hard to tell what our names mean if we don't know the Chinese characters used in names.
Since the 1980s though It became popular to name a child with a Korean name without Chinese characters and meaning mainly because it was encouraged by the government and they sound more pleasant to many Korean parents.
The blog writer argues that our name should show right away what it means as it is our identity like our ancestors' names did. The writer then tried changing his name, his friends' names and our former presidents' names into Korean names like the old times based on their Chinese characters. And we could see it sounded a bit or very awkward as he changed them. So he continues to try to make a point that it sounds awkward because we changed Chinese to Korean, so we should name our children more and more with Korean names that means something from the start.
It was interesting to see the names I know changed into Korean names because it reminded me of Indian names like 'speaks a lot', 'little one', 'walks as a bear' etc.
My mom wanted to name me '하늘[HahNeul]' which is a Korean word for 'sky'. But as still to these days, a lot of Korean parents have very little say on naming their own children but the grandparents do. My mom also had no choice but to name me after what my grandparents chose. My grandmother said she went to a naming place and paid for my name too. I guess people can be very superstitious when it comes to names.
I never really liked my Korean name, and I've been called by my English name for so long now even by my mom that it feels almost weird to hear someone calling me by my Korean name. Oh btw, my Chinese influenced expensive Korean name means 'mediator who's warm and gentle'.
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