Q: Korean Name in English (Why Hyphen?)
Yongchan Yoon
Hi. I was always wondering about people putting a hyphen in their first
name. Even our president's name on major newspapers and magazines here
put this hyphen (Young-Sam Kim).
However, I found many native people here confused and see "Young" as
first name and "Sam" as middle name. In my case, they call me "Yong"
from kids to professors, and I have been very disturbed. When they call
me twice, tt feels like they are saying "Yong Yong Jook-get-ji". :( So I
just eliminated this
hyphen on my name.
Is it just English grammar or is there a particular reason for that?
Thanks in advance
=====================================================================
Name: Yongchan Yoon Email: y...@acsu.buffalo.edu
Younghong Cho
I don't think there is any real grammatical reason for doing that. The only
reason I've seen is since in Korean, a syllable is written as a unit, a lot
of people started to separate between those syllables and since those
(usually) two syllables are their first name they put a hyphen to make them
look related.
I agree with you on the written form of Korean first names. I write my name
"Younghong Cho" and I stress every time that I have no middle name and that
"Younghong" is one word. And then, tell them to call me "Hong" if it's too
hard for them to remember and pronounce it. :)
Hong.
Yongchan Yoon wrote in message <3471E3D2...@acsu.buffalo.edu>...
T.M.GLASS
Yongchan Yoon (y...@acsu.buffalo.edu) wrote:
: Hi. I was always wondering about people putting a hyphen in their first
: name. Even our president's name on major newspapers and magazines here
: put this hyphen (Young-Sam Kim).
joined. A Hypothetical example: "Youngwon" could be "young won" or "youn
kwon". Sometimes an apostrophe is used to show the break but I think that
is confusing to the general public.
: However, I found many native people here confused and see "Young" as
: first name and "Sam" as middle name. In my case, they call me "Yong"
: from kids to professors, and I have been very disturbed. When they call
: me twice, tt feels like they are saying "Yong Yong Jook-get-ji". :( So I
: just eliminated this
: hyphen on my name.
I guess they are just accustomed to assuming the first name is the name
they should address people with. I would have thought that joining the
given names (with or without a hyphen) would help to avoid this and
using a hyphen would let the people know that you would prefer to be
called "Young chan" rather than "young".
In any case some people because of ignorance of other cultures or laguages
will always get it wrong. Westerners are even sometimes more confused by
attempts to make it clearer for them ie Asians writing their Family name
last a la western style. (I used to think that unlike other Asians,
Japanese originally wrote their family names last like westerners.)
\\\\\\\\\\\ Michael Glass \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
\\\\\\\\\\\ Sogang University \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
\\\\\\\\\\\ Seoul, Korea \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Deyon Kim
Because Korean names usually consist of 3 Korean characters, and Koreans
usually want to express 3 characters in English same way. For example, most
Koreans would write my name as KIM DAE YEON, or DAE-YEON KIM. But I like
shortest spelling so I use my name as Deyon Kim. If you find hyphens in
Koreans' names, you may think that it exists to distinguish Korean
characters. ;-)
By the way, there're more problems other than hyphens. Koreans prefer t to
d, p to b, ch to j, etc. So, many Koreans write Busan (the 2nd biggest city
in Korea) as Pusan. That's ok because we Koreans also can understand it
easily. But foreigners pronounce those really as t, p, and ch - then we
Koreans can't understand their words, either.
Younghong Cho
There is an official way to romanize (sp?) Korean. It is used on the street
signs in Korea. However, everyone seems to ignore this government-imposed
rules when it comes to names and/or personal use.
According to this rule (if I can remember correctly), my name should be
written as "Y'ong Hong Cho" or something like that. The convention has some
of the accent symbols that may not be available on a common QWERTY keyboard.
I have no idea what the historical perspective is on this romanization of
Korean names. But here are some of the things I noticed based on my name.
One of them is that my last name "Cho" is spelled with "CH" instead of "J".
One reason for it is that westerner actually hears non-vocal phoneme (I
don't know all the correct linguistic terms, so feel free to correct me)
when I say "Cho".
However, if I go to France, people will say my last name like "SHo". So,
after some searching, the one that would work for most languages is "TCHo".
But that looks ugly.
As for hyphenation, I prefer to capitalize the first letter of a syllable if
otherwise specified. For example, SaRam, EumAk, etc.. My first name would
be the case where someone specified explicitly to not capitalize the letters
in the middle (i.e., "Younghong"). I use this scheme all my web page.
Although I do understand why you are searching for a formality, I really
don't think it matters that much. We cannot exactly convert the Korean
phonemes to the Roman alphabets (not all language that uses the Roman
alphabets have the same set of phonemes) in the first place and even if one
tries so many people will furiously defend their own way. The Korean
government has a "guide-line", but nobody follows it in their personal life
(only on the street signs), which proves how hard it is, at this stage, to
standardize the romanization (sp?). If it were like in China where it has
government-developed strongly-enforced translation rules (for example, "Q"
actually sounds like "J"), it might be different, but Korea has passed the
stage where one organization, even if it were a government, can enforce
this.
And this romanization is very hard to make it work across all the languages
that uses the roman alphabets. For example, my name is "Younghong Cho" and
it sounds pretty close in English. However, when I went to Paris, France,
people would pronounce it as "YUNG-GONG SHO" and I didn't know that someone
has called my name.
It is a very hard problem to solve. However, I don't think trying to find a
clean rule from such naturally developed human creation is of any use.
Nothing in real life is "clean and crisp". The only thing that is "clean
and crisp" is what a "clean and crisp"-ly thinking human thinks of (before
s/he implements it). :)
Good luck.
Hong.
Yongchan Yoon wrote in message <34737F5B...@acsu.buffalo.edu>...
>Thanks a lot for all those quick replies.
>
>It seems that there is no Korean to English name translation convention,
and
>this hyphen has been used for the favor of Korean to emphasize in the
>meaning of each syllables. However, this is still not clear to me. If
this
>is the only reason, shouldn't we find names from others counties using this
>convention too? In fact, there are cases that hyphen is used in chinese
>names but I did not see them in any other country. i.e.) e-ric, ken-ji,
>mo-ham-med
>
>If there is no official rules or grammars in using this hyphen within first
>name, then at least, can one say spelling their name as three separate
>syllables; Yong Chan Yoon in my case, not true Korean name since Chan will
>be a middle name in English convention and there is no middle name in
Korean
>name. Of course, this is strictly to find the formality on naming
>convention, not to find who is using wrong or right name. They can be
>called whatever they want.
>
>Well, I am being picky about it here to find a formality so that i can
>clearly answer it in all aspects when one asks me why hyphen is used. In
>fact, many people have asked me but i couldn't answer it clearly except
>saying to distinguish the meaning in each syllables.
>
>any comment is always welcome, especially in historical aspect. Since when
>do we start using this hyphen?
Yongchan Yoon
T.M.GLASS
Yongchan Yoon (y...@acsu.buffalo.edu) wrote:
: Thanks a lot for all those quick replies.
: It seems that there is no Korean to English name translation convention, and
: this hyphen has been used for the favor of Korean to emphasize in the
: meaning of each syllables. However, this is still not clear to me. If this
: is the only reason, shouldn't we find names from others counties using this
: convention too? In fact, there are cases that hyphen is used in chinese
: names but I did not see them in any other country. i.e.) e-ric, ken-ji,
: mo-ham-med
The reason eric and mohammed are not hyphenated is simply because they are
one single name. You might have a case for hyphenating some names like
Peggy sue or Billy bob because they are intended to be spoken together
although they are actually two names.
I guess Japanese names like Kenji don't need hyphens because Japanese
romanization corresponds very closely to English sounds and there is no
confusion with the pronunciation.
: If there is no official rules or grammars in using this hyphen within first
: name, then at least, can one say spelling their name as three separate
: syllables; Yong Chan Yoon in my case, not true Korean name since Chan will
: be a middle name in English convention and there is no middle name in Korean
: name. Of course, this is strictly to find the formality on naming
: convention, not to find who is using wrong or right name. They can be
: called whatever they want.
If you did this, people unfamiliar with Asia cultures would proabably
assume "Yoon" was your family name (rightly so in this case - but only
because you have already changed the order to accomodate western culture,
and not everybody wants to do this.) People with a little knowledge of
Asian culture might assume your name is Yong.
You should also remember that many of the syllables used in Korean given
names could also be family names when seen only in hangeul. The many
variations of Romanization makes this situation even worse.
As to people addressing you by your first name, as I said before the only
way to avoid this is to tell them what you want to be called, or join the
two given names in some way.
I believe in Chinese culture intimate friends may call each other buy the
frist of their two given names. This makes some Chinese more predisposed
to being called by their first given name (than Koreans) when they go to
an English speaking country.
: Well, I am being picky about it here to find a formality so that i can
: clearly answer it in all aspects when one asks me why hyphen is used. In
: fact, many people have asked me but i couldn't answer it clearly except
: saying to distinguish the meaning in each syllables.
I think the best reasons were explained in my previous post.
: any comment is always welcome, especially in historical aspect. Since when
: do we start using this hyphen?
: =====================================================================
: Name: Yongchan Yoon Email: y...@acsu.buffalo.edu
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