random thoughts on names
in eastern culture, naming someone after their ancestor's name is disrespectful and avoided. however, according to a random youtube vid, in western culture it's actually a sign of respect. and that's why you have names like henry the 8th (divorced, beheaded and died :D) and gregory danielson iii (toki a, jan ale o! mi jan Kekan San! man he has so many fanart, mute precisely). and like it's so normal like i've seen so many people just being named after their parents or something while nobody in korea is named something like 방희엘 2세. i kinda want to name my kid ava lim junior or ava lim the second for funsies, and if the kid gets raised in korea she'd be one of a kind. like imagine going to school and
"hi kids, welcome to class 1-1! let's introduce ourselves!"
"i'm cindy myung, and i'm overly emotional! i also make death threats as a joke."
"i'm sijin kim, and i'm a psycho."
"i'm ava lim the second..."
"WHAT?"
"oh that's why i couldn't display your name on half my online documents..."
but then it would be so embarrassing for the poor kid. or maybe not. if they didn't bully me for being terrible at chinese then i wouldn't have hated chinese for so long.
also for some reason my favorite blogger's name is also ava (yes this ava) and i admire her and i have no idea if my english name being the same as her is a good thing or a bad thing or just a thing. idk but it's cool
in order to name my kid ava lim the second (but will i even have any? back in 5th grade i really wanted to have a kid but now idk), i need to 1. marry someone whose surname is lim 2. put my surname on my kid. traditionally kids get their dad's surname but recently some kids get both or their mom's. i think that's cool. like for example if the mom's surname is 강 and the dad's surname is 윤 then the kid's would be 윤강 or 강윤. one of my english teachers had a student who was like that and she thought the kid's mom was really cool. also the mom supported socialism and she thought that was cool too. also what if i married a person with the same surname but instead of giving the kid the same surname we decided the kid's surname was 임임 instead of just 임?
also koreans' surnames are easy to remember and short and real common, but in many parts of the world, nope. there are so many of them!!! and people can distinguish people by only their surnames sometimes, and sometimes people are more known for their surnames. if i say trump you know i'm referring to donald trump, compared to when i say donald with no context. and it's real funny when there's a bunch of koreans but foreigners do the thing they're used to and call koreans by their surnames. and then you have a soccer team lineup on tv that just says kim, kim, kim, kim, and so on. "...and kim scores!" "wait, which kim? there's over 10 of them."
then they're middle names which i think is cool because korean names have no such thing like that. i heard some koreans who have a separate name in a foreign language put one of them in their middle name so like if a random korean person's name is 강채원 (i think that's a cool name) and her english name is lina and she's going to an english speaking country, she could use the name chaewon lina kang or lina chaewon kang. the closest thing i've ever seen to this irl is in english hakwons and international schools. like they'd write names down like chaewon (lina) kang or lina (chaewon) kang.
what was i talking about again and why am i on a random tangent on names? i should do my homework and study for the midterm. also i encountered a foreign language high schooler who graduated from my english hakwon and we just stared at each other and she wore a lot of makeup and she asked me if i'm also preparing for a foreign language high school and i was like "whoa i've never seen a special high schooler close up like this she must have worked so hard and no way am i, this lazy gremlin, telling her i'm dreaming for a school that's harder to get into than this person. like it would be an insult to her and overestimation to myself." but then if that's the case i should start now and study for the midterm. yep i should finish my hw and study for the midterm as soon as possible. end of this random tangent! i wish i could start things faster and do things when i need to do them and rest when i need to. my phone's a real enemy, and also it's broken so i'm getting myself a 공신폰. but books (especially comics) are equally distracting compared to social media so idk if that will help, but yeah.
also nicknames. did you know that the word nickname used to be ekename but because ppl said 'an ekename' it got reanalyzed as 'a nekename' and now it's 'a nickname'? anyways i like to give humans, especially the ones from my english hakwon, random nicknames. there's a formula i use to make humans' english names (preferrably three syllables) into korean nicknames. in korean, your name is three syllables, the first one being your surname and the second and third ones being your given name, though there are exceptions. legally in korea, your full name can be up to 5 syllables, unless it's a foreign name like 김세바스티안. (warning: very inaccurate and oversimplified info from ava's memory of a yt vid)