Korean Job Discussion Forums

endofthewor1d · Joined: 01 Apr 2003 Location: the end of the wor1d.

i'm on the fence when it comes to giving students english names. if a kid in my class wants to go by his or her korean name, i never push them to do otherwise. but how does it work with mixed-race kids?

a coworker of mine recently had a baby, and she's got a korean name and an english name. it's wierd. the father (canadian) always refers to his daughter by her english name, and the mother (korean) always refers to her by the korean name. maybe it's my imagination, but it seems to me like there's a very subtle battle of cultural dominance whenever either parent refers to the kid. even if it is my imagination, surely there's the potential for that, and for the kid to be confused in the not-too-distant future. Q: what's your name? A: depends on where i am/who's asking.

and if the foreign parent is the father, how does the family name fit in if you decide to go korean? jefferson young bin doesn't really have a good ring to it, and certainly doesn't fit into the normal three-syllable pattern of most korean names.

anyway... my wife likes the idea of two names, but it worries me. those of you who have been through it, what did you do?

sorry if this is a stupid question, but with any luck, it's one i'll have to come to terms with before too long.

Corporal · Joined: 25 Jan 2003

Our daughter has an English first name, Korean middle and last name. The older generation often try to use solely the middle name to refer to her, but they give up quickly when she doesn't respond.

Some name combinations work better than others though. I picked up a taekwondo magazine when I was home and it listed a famous TKD instructor's daughter's names as being "Emerald Mi-Young" and "Jada Mi-Ho"! Laughing

What were they thinking?

endofthewor1d · Joined: 01 Apr 2003 Location: the end of the wor1d.

if your child has an english first name, and a korean middle and last name, does that mean it's left without a surname?

crazylemongirl · Joined: 23 Mar 2003 Location: almost there...

Not a parent, but here are some korean names that are very english sounding..

For example:
Jae-min (sounds like benjamin)
Yo-han
Mi-ra
Mi-na
So-ra
An-na

In the end though it's something you and your spouse have to work out and what works for some might not work for you.

Corporal · Joined: 25 Jan 2003

SuperHero · Joined: 10 Dec 2003 Location: Superhero Hideout

What Corp said.

My daughter has a four syllable English name followed by a 2 syllabe Korean name followed by my family name.

igotthisguitar · Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 5:55 am Post subject:

Pooky & Sha-sha Wink

peppergirl · Joined: 07 Dec 2003

Our daughter has a Korean first name, western middle name, and then her father's Korean family name.

Her Korean relatives call her by her Korean name, her Belgian relatives by her western name or her western nickname, my mother (Chinese) calls her by her Chinese nickname Smile

So far she responds to her Korean name, her western name and her western nickname, she doesn't hear her Chinese nickname enough to respond to it (yet?). (she's 7 months old).

HapKi · Joined: 10 Dec 2004 Location: TALL BUILDING-SEOUL

Coming up with an English name is the easy part.

For me, registering my daughter as a Korean proved more difficult name-wise. Finally, we opted for my wife's family name, followed by her 2 syllable Korean given name.

peppergirl · Joined: 07 Dec 2003

HapKi · Joined: 10 Dec 2004 Location: TALL BUILDING-SEOUL

Would have prefered to have MY western last name as the last name in her Korean name.

When we registered her with our local dong office, they all jumped on the phone to get a ruling on that, and said it was impossible. Now, according to threads on this very subject about six months ago which I started, posters said they were able to manage it (ie- multi syllable western first name, multi syllable western last name- as the registered Korean name).
In my case, I gave in.

chiaa · Joined: 23 Aug 2003

My son has one name. If it's English or Korean I don't care. I only care about the fact that it's one name.

Having two names in my opinion is fucking retarded. One name is always secondary to the other.

chiaa · Joined: 23 Aug 2003

Hobophobic · Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 7:43 am Post subject:

My son's name is Lee Ew-an in Korea, and on his Canadian passport my family name plus the Ewan Lee as his given names...but, maybe like everything, it is what mood, or who is in the office at the time? Wink

peppergirl · Joined: 07 Dec 2003

Won't it be a problem later if they have different names on their Korean & US/Canadian/.. passports? Our daughter has the exact same names on both her passports.