Hello,
While we aren’t planning on children for a couple more years, my fiance and I were talking baby names and I’m feeling pretty stumped!
He is Korean and I am African American, and we both have different ideas for what’s important in a baby name.
HIM: easy to pronounce, easy to spell, Americanized so as to prevent discrimination. He has a Korean name, and doesn’t want the kids to go through always having to repeat, spell or correct pronunciation like he did.
ME: not too challenging to pronounce or spell, but prioritize cultural connection over ease for others to use. Also prefer unique but old-fashioned, perhaps cutesy names. [name_f]My[/name_f] name is Arabic and I also have been correcting people on it all my life, but I seem to mind this less than my fiance.
In my perspective, I want our kids to have names that speak to their heritage. We don’t live around many Koreans or Korean speakers, and are very close in proximity to my family over his, so I thought Korean first or middle names might help them grow more evenly identified with both cultures.
But, my problems are that I don’t know Korean names well at all (aside from the typical structure), and I’m not sure which to choose that would also be easy for [name_f]English[/name_f] speakers to pronounce and spell. I also thought, perhaps we could use [name_f]English[/name_f] names that could be easily shortened to or be phonetically consistent with Korean names?
Some non-Korean names I like: [name_f]Penelope[/name_f] (Penny, 페니), [name_f]Olivia[/name_f] (Livi/Libby, 리삐), [name_f]Miriam[/name_f] (Miri, 미리)
… I have been stumped on boy names lol.
Any ideas from anyone? [name_m]Boy[/name_m] names, girl names, Korean names, other names, all welcome! Only caveats are, nothing ending in an “oh” sound as our last name is literally Oh. Thanks!