names

In the past I have been ambivalent about giving students English names. It's always seemed silly at best, and insulting at worst. These kids have perfectly fine names of their own. Who am I to barge in and start calling them something nobody else ever has?

This year, a lot of my kids don't have English names, and I've had to make a deliberate effort to learn their names. I've been teaching here for 2 months now, and I know maybe half of their names. It's tough. A lot of their names can kinda run together. There's Min-gyu, Tae-min, Ji-hoo, Su-bin, Su-min, Se-ran, Gyu-ri, Ji-won...and loads more. I leave it up to the kid to decide what I call them. Some of them like having an English name.

Korean names generally are made up of three parts. First is the family name, followed by two given names. Having begun learning Korean names, there's one in particular that puzzles me. It's a boys given name: Dong. I have two students with it, one is Dong-hwi, the other Dong-yeop. Now, Dong not only sounds funny in English, but it's also perilously close to the Korean word for "poop". In Korean, some letters can be kinda doubled up, which just means that the sound is said harder. ᄃ, for instance, is the letter for the "D" sound. ᄄ is also the "D" sound, but said more emphatically. When Korean words are written in English letters, this difference is typically accounted for simply by adding another "D". So, ᄄ is "dd", and ᄃ is just "d".

Now the Korean word for poop is "ddong". Clearly, that's about as close to the name "Dong" as you can get. I just can't imagine being a parent and naming my kid anything remotely close to the word for poop. You're hardly giving the kid a chance.