Friday, June 24, 2005

More On The Korean Embassy Blighters

When my missus was registering my son's birth with the Korean Embassy, so that he can go to school in Korea, have a passport and join their army, the guy at the other end of the phone, when he got to the surname, Ham, said, "Are you sure you want me to write down Ham as the family name? It sounds like a Korean ham company that I know."

If he had been talking to me and I knew Korean for "Pull your head in idiot" I may well have used it. The kid's name is his name and there is no going past it. When I'm at work and spelling my email for someone I quite often add, "As in 'ham 'n eggs'", not that it is a particularly difficult name to spell.

Just give me the name of that bloke. I'll make some fun out of his surname. I am full of hatred like that, just waiting for an avenue.

6 comments:

NewYorkMoments said...

Oooh, Hammy, you're soooo evil.

Anonymous said...

What's 'ham' called in Korean? 햄, how does one pronounce that? The guy was expecting a Korean sounding name maybe. 햄 is your name in Korean.

Hammy said...

The family name "Ham" is pronounced as "Harm" as in "self-harm" and not "ham ' eggs".

Nice use of hangul though Ben, I'm impressed. I haven't been able to get the Korean Input Method Editor to work on my new computer.

Miky's Chinese character book says that my family name means "all". And I need to update the character a little bit. I took the character from somebody's handwriting.

Anonymous said...

How is your son's name written in Korea? with Roman alphabets or Korean script.

Hammy said...

His name is written in hangul on the official papers. It could easily be written using the Roman alphabet and understood in Korea. Interestingly, we haven't given him a name using Chinese characters yet. Have to get around to that some time.

Anonymous said...

I got the hangul (now I know what it is) from an online English-Korean dictionary, then copy and paste. Do a search on for English-Korean dictionary, the only thing lacking is a pronunciation guide.