What's in a name

As I have mentioned in my earlier posts I give most of my Korean students English names. If they choose not have to one, that usually results in me using ‘you’ as a term of reference. Before cries of ‘colonisation’ ring out, let me explain; learning Korean names is just too hard. In one class I have a hae-jong, jong-hae, hae-young, young-hae, ji-young and ji-jong. Imagine a class consisting of Chris, Christopher, Christine, Chrissy, Christof and Christ. I tried to learn Korean names, I really did, but I just ended up insulting students, losing all respect for my academic knowledge and eventually sitting in a corner rocking.

My History teacher at school used to refer to students by their surnames. Logical, one would assume, although each time he started the lesson with ‘right, listen up’ I jumped to attention. (He was ex-military, and my surname is Wright, for those who don’t know me, or are too docile to get the joke.) My nerves were shredded, but for the most part the tactic worked well. Could that be my way into understanding Korean students on their level?

Consider this: In England, if two students in a class have the same name, this is often followed by the question, ‘are you two related?’ In Korea I teach a class of 8, of those 8, 6 have the family name ‘Kim.’ It’s not an unusual situation; indeed, around half of the Korean population has the one of three surnames, Kim, Park or Lee. There are only 250 Korean family names in use, compared with an estimate of 220,000 currently being used in English. Taking into account the number of other countries marrying into English speaking families, and the number is increasing year by year. It’s further increased by feminists and their sympathetic partners giving their children double barrelled surnames. When such children themselves marry, I look forward to future offspring with names such as Thomas Andrews-Deville-toomanynames-Mcfartoomodern.

However, just because there are a lot of words in a language, doesn’t make it any better. When it comes to flexibility of language, a look over the pond to America shows how even the strongest of linguistic foundations can lead to monotony. There is New York, (formally New Amsterdam, before they realised they weren’t keen on the whole legal pot idea) New Hampshire, New Orleans and New Jersey. These were all before they got lazy and decided to drop the ‘New’ altogether; this lead to Manchester, Boston, Lincoln, Birmingham Durham and Lancaster.



However, as poor as the Americans are at naming places, I can’t claim that the UK is number one. That award must go to, rather ironically, a new country; New Zealand. Whether it was their desire to show that they weren’t simply an extension of the Australian London Prison plan, or perhaps because most of the immigrants were a mixture of Dutch and Scottish; either way the Kiwis leave the rest of the world behind when it comes to naming places, especially mountains.



Perhaps they have an unfair advantage in that 75% of their country is mountainous, but none the less, Kiwi originality shines through, especially in the use of the word knob. Should you wish you could climb Bald Knob, Billie’s Knob, Jeanie’s Knob, Power Knob, Newcome Knob, Doctor’s Knob and Gordon’s Knob. In fact, Gordon has two knobs in New Zealand, both of which are climbable. Gordon also has Gordon’s Pyramid and a whole range named after him.

The childish jokes don’t stop at Knobs, you can climb a Bushy Cone, The Amazon’s Breasts, The Twins, Drunken Sailors or The Old Man Of the Buller.
I’m not sure what the accident rates on mountains in New Zealand are like, but I can only imagine they’re low. I can see climbers just crawling to an exposed ledge and waiting for the elements to take their course, for the alternative is:

‘Hello, mountain rescue? Yes I’m stuck on top of a Windy Knob. Where that is? It’s next to The Great Unknown. Hello? ... HELLO!’

The epic names carry on with Paradise Peak, but if that sounds too jolly for you, then you could always climb Mt Misery, Isolated Hill (part of a range), Mt Dreadful, or Mt Awful. You can even go Greek and climb Achilles or Ajax. The Devil even gets a look in; he even has two Devil’s lookouts on the east coast. Quite what the Devil has to look out for I’m not sure, but he must have a hunch it's coming just north of Christchurch.

If more serious issues are your thing, such as race perhaps, then the mountains can accommodate your needs too. There’s a Maori Chief Peak, and even a Niggerhead. With that name in mind Yellow Peak, Black Rat and White’s Safety Hut take on whole new meanings.

All the while a couple in said country were banned from naming their number 4real for the simple reason it included a digit. Not to insult the perseverance of their forefathers they pressed ahead and decided on Superman. Koreans, take note.