My name

27th August 2009

I just knew that my name was HeeSoo (Rosa). Nothing special, but just a common and simple name.

At church, I received baptism and there was a lot of choice of names I could choose. There were many other options like Elizabeth, Gabriella…etc. Since I play piano and have deep relationship with music, my mom decided that Rosa would fit me the best because Rosa was a saint and she also had relationship with art. In my old school, I used my real name- Heesoo. However, when I came to ISKL, my mom and I decided to use my church name. No one had called me Rosa before, so it was hard for me to get used to the name. Usually, foreigners find it challenging to read Korean names but since my name is Rosa, they don’t need a lot of time to practice how pronounce and memorize. Rosa…I pictured a beautiful red rose when I heard my name “Rosa”. I can feel the difference when people call me Rosa, and sometimes HeeSoo. I feel more comfortable when people call me Rosa, because there are more positive memories with my name Rosa, than HeeSoo.

Korean people name their children’s name carefully and thoughtfully, because the words are old Mandarin and each letter contain meanings. My Korean name is “HeeSoo” and there’s a lot of meaning in it. Hee means positive and happy. Soo means excellent and brilliant. My parents named me Hee Soo because they wanted me to give happiness to everyone and be excellent in everything.
“Sul” is a rare surname and I really like the feeling of being special because I have rare surname. However, there are also negative traits. There are quite a lot of depressing words that start with my surname. Also, my surname is supposed to pronounced like “Seol”, but if you just say “Sul”, that means alcohol in Korean. So, sometimes it makes me wonder why Koreans have funky surnames that are hard to pronounce it. But if I had option to change my name, I wouldn’t do that because there are a lot of memories with my name.