https://blogs.ubc.ca/jmastu/2022/10/26/names-matter/

Jessica’s blog post, Names Matter, talks about “the significance of names and the consequences changing one’s name can have on someone.” Her examples are Jai from Thammavongsa’s short story and Barbara Lee’s take on “reclaim[ing] the name.” One thing Jessica said about names in Western culture is that they do not have the significance they may have on identity in different cultures. I agree with her statement.

My Korean name is “Hyunseo,” written as 현서 in Korean. Although Korean is its own language, Korea once used Hanja which is traditional Chinese. Each letter has its own meaning. In my name, Hyun means sunlight and Seo means auspicious. My parents gave me this name, as they wanted me to be a warm and kind person who prospers in life. My sister’s name, Eunseo, means grace (Eun), and book/writing (Seo) to make her a graceful and intelligent person. These names carry a lot of meaning as most names in Korean do.

When we immigrated to Canada, my parents westernized our names, making us Rachel and Stella. Rachel is a name in the bible. At church, my parents were given a list of names that they could give me, and chose whichever one was the prettiest. My sister’s name was chosen at random. Both of our English names do not have much meaning–their only purpose was to make it easy for others to pronounce. I found this funny because one of my names was given to me because of the beautiful meaning while the other was chosen for barely any reason at all.

One thing that Jessica mentions is the importance of properly pronouncing a name. Hyunseo is not an easy name to pronounce–most of my friends pronounce Hyundai as hun-die. It made me think that maybe my parents gave my sister and me a westernized name because they did not want our name with so much meaning to be said incorrectly.