Okay, so I was browsing the book reviews and there’s a new one out about the Korean pilot who flew a MiG from North to South Korea, right in the fury of the early war. Guy’s a hero, and is still alive, under an Americanized name. But I read his original Korean name with something like bewilderment, wondering if I was reading MAD magazine, or an old NatLamp. It’s especially bad for a military man…
The guy’s name is (was) No Kum Sok.
Makes you understand why he fled - the North Koreans must have been really tight with their equipment. I mean, even our E-1 privates have cum socks. :rolleyes:
I have met a woman whose name is pronounced:
Oh Snot Penis
(And I was told that she speaks English…but, being a true gentleman, I preferred not to let her know that I did.)
My mother taught high school during the huge influx of Vietnamese refugees, and had more than one classroom crisis when a new student, barely literate in English (and sometimes illiterate in Vietnamese or Hmong) insisted, angrily, on the correct pronunciation of “Phuc.”
It often took family services counseling, with native linguist translators, to get the family to pronounce it “fook” - which apparently had some connotation in the original, making it even more difficult than just a perceived insult.
I knew one, once. She insisted it was pronounced “Height-ler,” though. And I knew her parents, and grandparents (old enough to remember the war, and the Holocaust, although the family had been in the US for quite a long time by them). Hey, it was their name, and they weren’t going to let some stupid dictator take it away from them.
It’s Sunday and I’m bored. So I checked the Social Security Death Index. It shows an even dozen people with the last name of Hitler dying in the US between 1965 and 2009.
Is there a way to check on the number of people who changed their name FROM “Hitler” since 1938? I’ve heard Hitler has living relatives in the US who not only changed their names, but swore never to reproduce. Although this may be an urban legend.
Another story which may or may not be true: The “Happy Days” spinoff, “Joanie Loves Chachi” was supposedly the highest rated series premiere in the history of Filipino television. Ratings dropped off sharply between the first and second episode, though.
Harold Dick. He was a grade school principal and intentionally went by Harry to make things worse.
Not a single name but two names making the sports section headlines…awkward. A couple years back the Tigers. The biggest names on a multi-player trade between the Tiger and Mariners were the pitchers Charlie Furbush and Doug Fister. Yes it was the Fister Furbush trade.
