Self-Proclaimed

Since coming to Auburn, I've become involved in an organization that meets once a week to interact with some of the international students in the Intensive English Program here in order to practice day-to-day conversational English. Of the students I've met, a large portion are from South Korea. I'm now meeting with two Korean girls for about on hour once a week for more personal attention and practice communicating effectively. This has unexpectedly become one of my ministries here, and I love it!

So today we had dinner together and they asked me what American name might fit them. So I started brainstorming and I mentioned the names Hannah (they thought it was really cool that it's spelled the same backwards) and Jenny (which was similar to one girl's given name). I'm not sure what they really thought of these options, but I think that's what I'll call them on my blog.

In any case, I then asked them what a good Korean name for me might be! So they started brainstorming, very seriously. They came up with a couple ideas and debated with each other, finally settling on Yuri. They showed me how to write it with Korean characters and then set about choosing Chinese characters to write it with. Now, I'm not entirely certain how this works, but from their explanation it seems to me that there are many different Chinese characters that represent the same sound but have different meanings, so when choosing a name a parent would also have to choose how to spell it. I think each character represents a syllable, so they could puzzle out which combination of meanings was their favorite. The girls decided the characters for 'flower' and 'beautiful and bright' would be best for me. I think I like that combination.

While we enjoyed searching for names for each other, the origin of this conversation unsettled me a little. The girls were saying they wanted to find American names because no one could remember their Korean names, their given names. I understand that it's difficult for many people to pronounce Korean names, and they're harder to remember if we've never heard of them before. But at the same time, I think it shows a person that you value them when you make an effort to learn their name, their given name. And I think it sends the opposite message if you never try.