David came home yesterday with the news that the management company that maintains the suite of offices where his company leases space—in addition to taking care of the building, they provide clerical and technical support staff —had changed hands.
The new company has insisted that all of its employees, particularly the women who answer the phones and work the front desk, adopt an English first name.
I find it kind of ridiculous that anyone believes English-speaking people can’t cope with talking to someone who speaks perfect English but has a Korean name. It’s not even like overseas telemarketers who are supposed to answer American companies’ customer service lines as if they were working in an office across the country, not across the planet. Here, everyone knows they’re calling Korea. Korean first names are also not hard to pronounce. They are two syllables. (Surnames are one.)
This has made me wonder about all the Korean people I know who work with expats and use Western first names as a matter of course. You’re introduced to people with the name Jenny or Carol or Nancy, though that clearly isn’t their given name. I guess I’d always assumed that it was a name they’d acquired when taking an English-language class and they preferred using it, instead of telling the clueless foreigner du jour their actual first name.
From some things I’ve read, until recently in Korean society it wasn’t customary for mere acquaintances to refer to each other by their given names, and certainly not appropriate to call someone you just met by their first name. As someone who’s always felt that the phrase “being on a first-name basis” should really count for something, I’m all for that.
I used to hate it when, working one of my many fast-food/waitressing jobs in high school and college, someone (usually some old wanker with too much cologne and a bad hairpiece) would get overly familiar just by looking at my employer-mandated name badge. “Well, hello, Cathi. Yes, I’d like four Big Mac Number One Combos, Supersized, with no pickles, extra onions and a Diet Coke …”
If you don’t know me quite well, my first name is none of your business. I’m happy to do my job, and do it courteously, but I refuse to pretend to be all friendly and happy-happy just because someone wants to buy a beer or some chicken fingers. I’m just old-fashioned that way. If I’d thought of it, I would have invented a fake name for all those jobs, too. (Why, yes, my parents did name me Kissmyass, why do you ask?)
But now I wonder whether all of the people I’ve met here have been forced to assume Anglicized names under duress. A condition of employment: A “white-washing” of their Koreanness in someone’s misguided attempt to make us feel more “comfortable.” If so, I think it really stinks.
