Amusing names

By Nam Sang-so

Parents give newborn babies their names, so we have no chance to name ourselves. Chinese have 500 different names while Koreans have 250, and Japanese use 270,000 family names, all in Chinese characters, hanja in Korean or kanji in Japanese, according to Japanese statistics. In the United States it is known that 150,000 surnames are being employed by multiple ethnic groups.

The most frequently used surnames in China are: Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu, Chen, Yang, Huang, so on. And in the Korean Peninsula they are: Kim, Yi or Lee, Park, Choi, Jung, Gang and Chang in that order. The most familiar Japanese names are: Sato, Suzuki, Takahashi, Tanaka, Watanabe, Ito and Yamamoto. One in 60 Japanese families uses Sato and there are many Satos in Hokkaido in northeastern Japan.

Korea’s Changs or Jangs employ the same hanja of Zhang in Chinese. They must share the same forefather. Lim or Yim, meaning wood, is probably the only name Chinese, Korean and Japanese use in the same single Chinese character, though the Japanese pronounce it Hayashi. There are 537,400 Hayashis in Japan.

Some 200 Japanese use miso (soybean paste) for their surname. They show their family name only in kanji on their nameplate attached to the gatepost facing the road. Uwaki or Ukigi means love affair or flirtation but over 200 families in Japan use the name rather proudly. More than 300 families place a Rusu (absence) nameplate to the gatepost while 30 families show they are Mawarimichi (detour). Nozoki means Peeping Tom but our neighbors across the East Sea consider it an aristocratic name. Actually it sounds noble. the Muteki families though only 30 of them were very proud of themselves during the war as it means invincible.

The first sign elder tourists look for in any city is toilet and it’s very easy to find them in Tokyo. “Excuse me, I need to wash my hands,” you’d say before taking a seat at a restaurant but actually you would do other activities as well. Japanese do the same but they write Otearai which means washing hand. Many families use the same kanji in the three letters for toilet for their family name but pronounce it Mitarai. Some 1,000 families use Shiraga or white hair for their name and another 400 families including their children are named Hage or bald. By the way, the emperor of Japan has no surname.

Koreans love humor, too. Mr. Ahn Cheol-soo, who was a failed presidential candidate, can mean “I won’t give up.” Gang Do-ya: a robber! Pi Ba-da sounds like a North Korean name as it means sea of blood. I wouldn’t translate In-bun in hanja here, but it’s still a girl’s name. Bun also means face power and had been a common feminine name before the World War II. I liked my mother’s poetic name Wol-bun which translates to face powdering in the moonlight.

Ahn Hae-yo, An A-ju, and Yim Shin-jung all sound soft and feminine. When she says her name is Ahn Hae-yo, boys should stop wasting their time. But if it was “Anaju,” by all means hug her tight. If a woman introduces herself Yimshinjung, let her sit comfortably. She is pregnant.

The writer (sangsonam@gmail.com) is a translator.