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Re: KOREAN FIRST NAMES TRANSLATED IN ENGLISH
in reply to a message by Pie
That would be a misinterpretation of how ideographic writing systems are used to render names. Certainly the basic meaning of the hanja influences those chosen, but there are far more words and names in most languages than can be represented by unique ideographs. Words whose meaning is known may be represented by compound ideographs based on the meaning (even if a simple ideograph exists a compound may be used for "srtistic" reasons), a euphemism or something more like a crossword clue, but often it is easier to use homophones unrelated to the meaning. When it comes to a name which does not have a commonly known meaning (and sometimes even it it does), that provides a plethora of ways to express it. Few will actually have any real bearing on the meaning of a name.

This message was edited 2/5/2018, 4:54 AM

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