names

Artificial pronunciation of Korea (and English)

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(This post went through several drafts as I became increasingly convinced that the voiceover is artificially generated, and may be slightly less coherent than I would like.)

Facebook showed me a number of channels summarising Japanese, Korean and Chinese movies and television dramas. One post (5 teens rely on each other to survive – Reply 1988 Kdrama Recap (you don’t have to watch the whole thing; the first few minutes will give you an idea) on one channel (Recap Cookie) is the Korean television drama Reply 1998 (English, Korean), which I have mentioned before. Within in a few minutes, it is apparent that the voiceover (which I became increasingly convinced is artificially generated) is seriously and inconsistently mispronouncing every Korean word, and also some English words. 

Most noticeable are the names. The five main characters, in the order they are introduced in the drama and summary video, are:

류동룡 Ryu Dong-ryong, pronounced as ry-oo (/raɪ.u/) dong-ry-ong (/ɒ/) (or ry-ung (/ʌ/), rather than ryoo dong-nyong. (There is a special pronunciation change for ㄹ after ㅇ.) 

김정환 Kim Jung-hwan (or Jeong-hwan), pronounced as kim yoong(/ʊ/)-H(aitch)-won (compare German), yong(ɒ)-H-wan and young(/ʌ/)-H-wan, rather than jong-hwan (there is no rule of Korean pronunciation which changes ㅈ into /j/, though in a comment https://neverpureandrarelysimple.wordpress.com/2026/01/24/apostrophes-catastrophes-and-other-strophes/#comments to recent post, sebmb1 mentioned news reports rendering Kim Jong-Un as yong). He /laɪvz/ upstairs from the protagonist Deok-seon.

택 Taek, pronounced as if teak rather than approximately /tɛk/ or /teɪk/.

선우 Sun-woo (or Seon-woo), pronounced as sun(/ʌ/)-woo, rather than approximately /ɒ/.

the protagonist 성덕선 Sung Deok-sun (or Seong Deok-seon), pronounced as song dee-ok-son (/ɒ/) or sung dee-ok-sun (/ʌ/) (her family /laɪvz/ in a half-basement)

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Benjamin and other names

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In a recent post I mentioned the sons of Jacob as Old Testament biblical names which either are or aren’t in widespread use. Various sources track the popularity of names over time. It would take too long to identify the most comprehensive and/or authoritative, so I chose one at random (NameTrends), which almost certainly pertains to the USA. Its results for the most recent year, in most cases 2020 but in some cases earlier, and in descending order, are. 
Benjamin no 7 male baby name, 6.627 per thousand 
Levi no 18, 4.917 per thousand
Joseph no 26, 4.559 per thousand
Asher no 32, 4.153 per thousand
Judah no 186, 1.13 per thousand
Reuben no 919, 0.132 per thousand
Dan no 945, 0.077 per thousand compare Daniel no 14, 5.14 per thousand
Simeon no 965, 0.115 per thousand compare Simon no 251, 0.759 per thousand
Zebulun (not in the top 2000) compare Zebulon no 981, 0.044 per thousand
Naphtali (not in the top 2000)
Gad (not in the top 2000)

A few observations: These results are broadly what I would have expected, except I would have put Joseph above Levi and Asher lower, maybe below Judah and Reuben. Asher and to a lesser extent Levi have been “big movers” over the past 1, 10 and 20 years, which I have obviously missed.

Joseph is more likely to be the New Testament Joseph of Nazareth than the Old Testament patriarch Joseph, Dan is more likely to an abbreviation of the OT prophet Daniel, Simeon is possibly more likely to be the NT character (Luke 2) and Simon is more likely to the NT apostle Simon Peter (Simon being a variant of Simeon). 

Other names also have variants, across Judaism (Beniamin, Yehuda(h)/Yehudi, Shimon), Islam (Yūsuf), English-speaking countries (Jude) and other Christian-tradition countries (Giuseppe, Josef, José, Yossi, Semyon, Semen (all of which may predominantly refer to the NT characters), and abbreviations (Benny, Ben, Joey, Joe, Rube, Danny). Note also the female forms Danielle and Simone. 

The less common names have been less common for some time (NameTrends’ results are from 1880). The more common names show a variety of trends:
Benjamin: peaked in 1889, slow decline to 1940-1960, strong growth to peak in 1981 and popular since
Levi: rare and declined from 1880 to 1960s, moderate growth to 2005 and strong growth since
Joseph: major declines from 1914 to 1974, moderate growth to 1982 and major decline since
Asher: rare until the late 1990s, then very strong growth since then
Judah: (results begin in 1998) strong growth since then, from a low base

I can’t even begin to speculate about the socio-cultural factor behind those. 

I mustn’t forget the less obviously biblical name Dinah (Dina, Deena but not the Roman Diana, Dianne), which is rare. 

My very OT name peaked in the 1950s and 1960s, and has been declining since, but still ranks in the top 30.

Jezebel and other names

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Two posts ago was about the name Shad, which might be derived from the biblical name Shadrach. A few days after I saw that advertisement on that bus, I attended my great-niece’s baptism at her family’s church. Over morning tea I was a talking to a group of people including the minister and somehow the topic turned towards names. The minister said he and his wife had given their first two children perfectly respectable biblical names, then when she was pregnant again he suggested Jezebel. Why not? It’s a biblical name, and even has the -el ending (which may also occur in neighbouring languages and religions).

But Jezebel is the archetypal Bad Woman. Her fault wasn’t sexual; it was religious and political. She was the daughter of King Ithobaal of Tyre (note the -baal ending) and probably didn’t have much say in her alliance-sealing wedding to King Ahab of Israel. Like many such princesses/queens, she continued to worship her own god, but unlike many others actively instigated the replacement of Yahwism with Baalism, desecrating altars, instigating the killing of some prophets and forcing the leading prophet Elijah into hiding. The image of a painted Jezebel comes after the deaths of Ahab and his two immediate successors. As the new king Jehu approached the palace at Jezreel, Jezebel “painted her face, and tired her head” and mocked him (this was facing death with dignity), before some palace eunuchs threw her out the window and her body was trampled by horses (this wasn’t). (This story is highly coloured by the writer’s implacable opposition to anything non-Yahwistic.)

Wikipedia’s disambiguation page lists fictional people, notably in the 1938 movie with Bette Davis and Henry Fonda, and 1954 novel The Caves of Steel (and sequels) by Isaac Asimov, in which the perfectly respectable Jezebel (Jessie) Baley is married to Elijah (Lije) Baley (Asimov has Elijah improbably expound on the names and the history of the kings of Israel), but apparently no real people. Note also Ahab, possibly better known as the obsessed whaling ship captain in Moby Dick.

Among the many Old Testament names which are or were widely used, many others weren’t or aren’t. The twelve sons of Jacob are indicative: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph and Benjamin. (Most Dans are named after Daniel, a different person.) I have not encountered Naphtali, Gad, Issachar or Zebulun otherwise, and Asher once (a fictional character). The first four are moderately common/rare, leaving only the last two in widespread use.

Shad and other names

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An advertisement on a local bus advises of the existence of a local businessman with the given name of Shad, whose surname and business I didn’t note (except that his surname isn’t Roe and not Anglo/Saxon/Celtic), which probably defeats the point of the advertisement but is irrelevant to this post. (I could search online but won’t) Inevitably I started thinking about the name Shad. It is possible that it’s a name from a language/culture I am unaware of, but to me it most strongly brings to mind the biblical Shadrach, one of the three young men in the book of Daniel, who were thrown into and miraculously saved from a fiery furnace after refusing to worship a golden image in the time of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzzar. Their Babylonian names of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (which probably invoke the Babylonian gods Aku and Nebo) are better known than their Jewish names of Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (which contain the strongly Jewish elements -iah and -el). 

I have a vague memory of encountering the name Meshach somewhere recently, but I can’t remember where. Wikipedia lists 13 real and 6 fictional people with the given or surname Shadrach or Shadrack, including Azariah Shadrach, but not any Meshachs or Abednegos. There probably aren’t too many Abednegos these days, but William Abednego “Bendigo” Thompson was a 19th century English boxer whose nickname indirectly lives on in the Australian city of Bendigo (a local boxer gained that nickname because his fighting style resembled Thompson.

Of the Hebrew names, Wikipedia lists four biblical and 13 other people named Hananiah or related spellings, including Ananias (with even more on its page for that name); two biblical and 10 other people named Misael or Mishael; and 10 biblical and four other people named Azariah. 

Azariah means “God has helped” or “Helped by God”, and is presumably pronounced a-za-RYE-a, as in Jeremiah. The name Azaria is related. In Australia, this is most famous as the given name of Azaria Chamberlain (a-ZAH-ree-a), a baby who disappeared from a camping site at Uluru/Ayers Rock in 1980, officially found to have been taken and killed by a dingo (not, as widely believed at the time, to have been killed by her mother, not helped by a rumour that the name means “sacrifice in the wilderness”). This was later the basis of the movie Evil angels/A cry in the dark, released less than two months after the parents Lindy and Michael were exonerated by the Northern Territory Court of Appeals of all charges filed against them. In the USA and probably other countries, it is most famous as the surname of actor and producer Hank Azaria (a-ZAIR-ee-a). 

Various sources on the internet suggest the biblical connection for Shad, but also a change of pronunciation and spelling from Chad, which is a completely different name.

Auraji

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In a recent post I described a train/bus trip from Seoul’s Cheongnyangni station to the village of Auraji, in Jeongseon county, Gangwon province. Even a moderate familiarity with Korea place names shows that Auraji is a very unusual place name. Overwhelmingly most Korean place names have two syllables, while a few have three (Panmunjeom, Uijeongbu, Cheongnyangni, Seogwipo). The hangeul spelling of 아우라지 doesn’t help. 

I searched and found this page on the Visit Korea site, which explains: 

Its name is derived from the Korean word eoureojida, meaning “to meet” as the waters of Pyeongchang and Samcheok unite in this area.

(Korean wikipedia uses both spellings: ‘아우라지’는 어우러진다는 뜻으로서 (Auraji means to come together).)

But meet is 만나다 (which word I know). eoureojida is the transliteration of 어우러지다 (which I didn’t), which means get joined together, be well-matched, blend in. Two questions arise: why did that particular confluence get that name when thousands of similar others didn’t (similarly, a small town in Australia is named The Rock), and which came first, the pronunciation and spelling 아우라지 (as in the place name) or 어우러지(as in the verb) (or is 아우라지 a local variation)? Place names often retain older spellings and/or pronunciations. I will probably never know the answer to those two questions.

I asked my wife what Auraji meant, and she said it didn’t mean anything, it was just a place name. I showed her the Visit Korea page and she said “Oh, maybe that’s right”.

Slightly related, and not worth a post on its own: on my last evening in Korea, we met a niece, her husband and two daughters, one of whom I’d met on my second trip and the other of whom I’d only seen in a video call. The younger is about 4 and attends kindergarten. I asked 친구 많아요? (manh-a-yo, friends many > Do you have many friends?)  to which she answered 네 (yes). But I might have actually asked 친구 만나요?  (man-na-yo, friends meet > Do you meet your friends?). Korean speakers can probably speak and hear the distinction, and I probably can’t. Both questions are relevant, though any kindergarten child might reasonably be expected to meet their friends, whether they have many or few. Do you meet your friends at kindergarten? Of course. Do you have many friends? Yes or no.

PS 28 Nov I asked my wife about the comparative pronunciation of 많아요 and 만나요. Without getting technical, the difference is basically that the first vowel in 만나요 closes to the consonant quicker than 많아요: mahn-a-yo v mah-na-yo. Apparently I pronounce 많아요 closer to 만나요, but there’s no telling which pronunciation our great niece understood. I might have disambiguated by saying 친구가 많아요? (with 친구 as the subject) or 친구를 만나요? (with 친구 as the object).

Some Sevit and GLZIPTEO

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Located at the southern end of Seoul’s Banpo Bridge is a recent development consisting of three linked floating structures with leisure, entertainment and related facilities. Its Korean name is transliterated officially as Some Sevit, which looks really strange, not least the ‘v’. Most sources give it as Sebitseom, which looks more reasonable. The Korean name is 세빛섬, which my level of Korean understands as three + light (‘not dark’, not ‘not heavy’) + island(s).

Located near the old city wall near Namsan is an establishment named GLZIPTEO, which I can only assume is an attempted transliteration of the Korean 글집터 (otherwise geul-jib-teo) which appears alongside it. 집 is usually house, but I can’t even guess at 글, 터 or the whole thing. Google and Bing translate 글집터 as writing site, and Papago as a collection of writings. Google finds no results for GLZIPTEO and various results (all in Korean) for 글집터, one of which is the registration for an e-commerce business.

ㅂ is often used to transliterate English v (as well as b) and ㅈ for z (as well as j), but the converse is rarely if ever used. Certainly these are the first times I’ve seen either.

(For possibly more than you want to know about the romanisation of Korean.)

Hell is bright

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The small town of Hell, Michigan is known only for its unusual name and occasionally freezing over. 

This evening a German organist named Felix Hell played a recital in Sydney. Beforehand, some of us were discussing his unusual surname. The scope for jokes in English is obvious, but what does it mean in German? I had to check. Fortunately it means bright, changing him from happy hell to happy bright. Conversely, hell (English) is Hölle. I can’t remember that I’ve encountered either hell (German) or Hölle in the course of singing or reading about German. I’m slightly surprised that none of the moderately- to highly-experience classical choristers knew either word. 

Back to Hell, Michigan, there is no acknowledged reason for its name. Wikipedia lists four theories: German travellers arrived one sunny afternoon and said “So schöne hell!” (So beautifully bright!); early explorers faced difficult conditions including mosquitoes, thick forest cover and extensive wetlands; early settler/businessman George Reeves paid the local grain farmers with home-distilled whiskey, leading their wives to comment that their husbands had gone to Hell again at harvest time; and Reeves answering the question of what the town should be called with “I don’t care. You can name it Hell for all I care”.

Some people don’t find hell a joking matter.

Initials

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One of my wives’ friends’ husbands One of my wife’s friend’s husband The husband of one of the friends of my wife has a medium-sized tattoo with JS ba in gothic type. I assumed that this was meant to be JS Bach but the tattoo looked non-new, and over seeing him several times over several years, there was no addition to it. Also, if it was JS Bach I would have expected my wife to say “Oh, he’s really interested in music”. 

Over dinner on Sunday night, she said “Oh, he’s got a tattoo of his wife’s name. Do you want to get a tattoo of my name?”. (No.) His wife’s family name isn’t Ba (which isn’t a Korean family name) but Ha (which is), which doesn’t explain the lower-case letter. Both upper-case B and H and lower-case b and h look similar enough in an intricate font like Gothic. 

My experience is that Korean people rarely use initials plus surname, but then neither do non-famous English-speaking people.  The only context I can remember seeing initials plus surname (or maybe surname plus initials) is on the shirts of Korean association football/soccer players, but I can’t find an example now. In a previous post, I mentioned that a previous Korean foreign minister had the name Lee Bum-Suk (or Beom-Seok), and that Wikipedia notes that this name ‘became a source of mirth to Anglophones’. I didn’t mention reading somewhere sometime that at least one news source referred to him as BS Lee. (If you pronounce the name closer to Bomb Sock than Bum Suck, then the problem largely goes away.) I also mentioned a current student whose name was relevant. Now, almost 10 years later, I can say that his name was Young-Bum, which he spelled like that. I didn’t suggest that he shouldn’t. Yeong-Beom is less of a problem.

I am trying to figure out why “one of my wife’s friend’s husbands” looks and sounds so strange. I have one wife, she has many friends, most of them have one husband, I am talking about one friend (or one of the friends) and one husband (or one of the husbands). “One” is singular (because we say “One … has a tattoo”), but “of the” can only be followed by a plural noun.

A sham win

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The classical music website Slipped Disc reported that “Dreary Van Cliburn Ends In Sham Win”, referring to the recent Van Cliburn piano competition in Forth Worth, Texas.

What – the winner wasn’t who they purported to be, or won by fraud or hoax? No, his name is Aristo Sham, a Hong Kong Chinese man living in Sweden. We can obviously look forward to Sham concerts and Sham recordings. 

I am reminded of the ShamWow (I won’t link), the “Super Absorbent, Multi-Purpose Cleaning Cloth”, advertisements for which were once a staple of late-night television – Wikipedia says from 2006 but I have a memory of them from long before that. (I went to Korea for the first time in 2006, and didn’t watch much television either in Australia or Korea, and they obviously weren’t advertised in Korea.) The ShamWow is, appropriately, a sham chamois.

To space or not to space

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The Youtube channel 하늘여행 sky travel is dedicated to drone footage over Korea, mainly over scenic areas, presumably because of restrictions over built-up areas. Most of the videos are short (1 to 5 minutes) but the first video (WordPress wants to embed rather than link) is presumably a compilation of most or all. The first notable thing is the repeated stirring orchestral music. The second is that that the names of the locations, in the bottom left of the screen, are given in the form Yeo Su, rather than Yeosu. To confuse the issue, the name of each video is given in the form yeosu, but the video thumbnail shows yeo su. At least be consistent.

Nothing in the National Institute of Korean Language’s guidelines for Revised Romanisation specifies that names of provinces, cities, towns and villages should be rendered without a space, but all its examples do. The previously widely used McCune–Reischauer transliteration also rendered place names without a space. I have not previously encountered Korean place names with spaces, and I assume that this Youtuber (almost certainly Korean and young enough to be tech savvy) hasn’t either. 

Japanese and Chinese place names are also almost always rendered without spaces, though I recently saw Xi An. Conversely, Vietnamese places names are almost always rendered with spaces, apart from the very well-known Hanoi, Saigon, Hue and Halong Bay. I have seen Viet Nam.

Many English-language place names start off as two words but become one, eg Spring Field > Springfield. Australia has New Town (Tasmania) and Newtown (New South Wales). Standardisation has probably set in with existing names, but there might be some debate over new names. Much of the same applies to  personal names (for Koreans, see these previous posts).

PS 7 June on a travel vlog of Shanghai, I saw a sign with Shang Hai, and in a suburb of Sydney I saw a restaurant (or maybe butcher’s shop) with 수원 rendered as Su One instead of the otherwise universal Suwon.