On this Father's day my dad reminds me of what my Korean name means.
I was born with the name James and that is what is on my birth certificate.
However, for the first time in my 26 years of life, I finally get the low down on what my Korean name actually means!. Yeah, that long...language barriers can kid of slow things down!
As we drive home from our Father's day dinner my dad exclaims from the back, "Lee Chul Hyuk!" (Korean names are preceded with the family name). Well yeah dad, that's my Korean name. "Chul is steel. And hyuk means shining. Shining steel. Strong and bold". "Woe", I say. "Well, now I know".
"Yes, James. That is what I named you".
After spending a few moments feeling a bit too cool about the name, I start to appreciate our Korean heritage a lot more. I start to remember what strong context the culture follows and that names mean something other than just sounding right. A culture that follows a strong set of values and though I may not agree with all of them, I do find them beautiful as they make their ways through hundreds and hundreds of years of history (thousands of years if you consider that we and our values descend from the Chinese and Mongolians).
Although my life has been and will continue to be enormously American, I am glad to be pulled back into realizing where my family comes from and I begin to appreciate more my Dad's effort to remind me of where our heritage lies. With my name comes a whole story of a family's journey, mainly two people who came to America from Korea to raise a family.
