Ji Youn as in Beautiful Purpose
Hi, my name is Ji Youn.
You may have heard me introduce myself with the pronunciation of ji yan. In the past few months, I’ve decided to reclaim my name with the actual pronunciation. This is the story of my name and how it has and continues to shape who I am.
Ji Youn is my Corean name. It is pronounced as ji yeon or ji yuhn — same yeon (and same struggle) as Steven Yeun. Or you can also read it as ji young, but take out the g, which is how my dad came up with the English spelling. Though growing up, it was more often mispronounced as ji yoon, which is a totally different name in Corean.
A Corean name in a white world
My family immigrated to so-called Canada when I was 5 years old. My parents asked me and my sister if we wanted to keep our Corean names or take on English names. We both decided to keep our Corean names (thank you, little Ji). But eventually, I still modified my name to what I thought would “fit better” into a white society - something that a lot of racialized people experience (thank you Michelle MiJung Kim for laying it out so succinctly). The “yuhn/youn/yeon” sound isn’t a common one in English. It felt too short, cut off, and Asian. When I was 7 years old, I decided to go by ji yan because I thought it sounded more English. I also added the hyphen in between Ji and Youn (there isn’t one legally). White so-called North America doesn’t approve of a two-part name and often mistakes the second part as a middle name (which is not a thing in Corean). We saw this happen in the misnaming of the victims of the Atlanta shooting. It happens in government documents, and my school files. My entire family had to book our COVID-19 vaccines with the first half of our names, because the provincial health system chose to split us in half.
I adjusted my name for the comfort of a white audience at only 7 years old. I couldn’t name white supremacy or racism at the time, of course. But I had the felt sense, the embodied knowing that I had to adjust my name for white peoples’ convenience. And I decided that if people were going to get my name wrong anyway, I might as well correct them with a name that they might be able to pronounce easier. I spent my entire childhood and adolescence correcting teachers and classmates. I hated attendance at the beginning of the school year, or when a substitute was in. My classmates and I would always feel the tension build up as the teacher went down the class list, waiting for them to hesitate at my name. Some people didn’t even bother with my already adjusted name, ji yan. I had one high school drama teacher call me Miss Kim the whole term. I’ve had employers refuse to remember ji yan and just call me Ji instead.
For the past few years, I’ve been struggling with my name, becoming more and more aware of my assimilation to whiteness and the shame that came with it. Fortunately, a handful of experiences in the past year inspired me to lean into my name.
Beautiful purpose
Ji Youn is my Corean name. My great aunt named me based on my birth chart, according to Corean astrology. Coreans believe that a name shapes our destiny. Alignment between a person and their name is crucial to living a more peaceful, aligned life. Historically, many Coreans have been named based on their birth chart and for some, it has incredibly significant meanings. I know one elderly family friend whose wealthy father sold a house in order to pay for her naming process. Very different from picking out a name in a book of baby names.
Because Corea used to use Chinese characters (한자 hanja) as the written language (the current alphabet, hangul, was made in 1446), many of our words, including names, are rooted in Chinese characters with particular meanings. Loosely translated, my name means beautiful purpose. Let me break it down for you.
Ji Youn (English)
지연 (Hangul)
志娟 (Hanja)
Ji is 지 in hangul and 志 in hanja. 지 means a Corean word called 뜻 (ddeut), loosely translated as purpose or meaning. Youn is 연 in hangul and 娟 in hanja, meaning 아름다운, translated as beautiful.
뜻 지 아름다운 연
purpose Ji beautiful Youn
Seonbi’s ma-eum
But I got curious about the meaning of the word 뜻 since there’s no exact translation in English. A super cool thing about hanja is that many characters are composed of multiple characters to shape their meaning.
So what’s the story of 뜻? 뜻 지 (志) is composed of 2 parts in hanja: 士 (선비 사) and 心 (마음 심). 士 translates to virtuous scholar (선비 pronounced seonbi) and 心 translates to what Coreans call 마음 (pronounced ma-eum).
마음 has no direct translation in English. While the West separates the heart and mind, Eastern philosophies see the two as interconnected. 마음 describes the combination of the heart and mind. You can read more about it in Fluent Korean’s post.
So 뜻 (Ji) means “a seonbi’s ma-eum”.
Seonbi were rooted in social responsibility and social justice. Antique Alive describes seonbi as the following:
Although they were members of the ruling class during the Joseon Dynasty, they were also imbued with a deep sense of social responsibility. With courage and a passion for justice, they submitted blunt petitions to the king knowing that in doing so they put their lives in danger. They also deeply sympathized with the trials and tribulations of the commoner class. It is the spirit of seonbi that carried the Joseon Dynasty through its 500-year history, and it was this same spirit that was passed on to the university students and intellectuals of modern-day Korea who made Korea's democratization possible.
As Papa Kim explained all of this to me, he said that a seonbi’s ma-eum is therefore characterized by their morals, mobilization, collective action, and unwavering commitment (or stubbornness, his words) for justice. “And this is why you are the way you are!” he said.
So my name, Ji Youn 지연, means beautiful purpose — a beautiful purpose rooted in justice and collective liberation.
Despite my grief and anger associated with the many years of white-washing my name for assimilation, a childhood friend reminded me that in making this transition now, there will eventually be more people who know me by my actual name than the attempted assimilation version. I also feel deep empathy for my 7-year-old self who did the best she could in navigating a white world as a child of Corean diaspora, wanting to hold onto her Corean name but feeling the need to make it more palatable for the white audience.
Ji Youn as in beautiful purpose. This is who I am and this is the significance of my name. I aim to embrace this gift that my elders and ancestors blessed me with. It is a constant reminder of who and what I aim to embody — including the stubbornness, I’ll take it!.
NOTES
I would like to thank a handful of people for helping me get to this place of reclaiming my name. One of my counselling clients who reclaimed their Corean name through our work together — your courageous journey shook me to my core in confronting myself. My ex who was the first non-Corean person to call me by my Corean name — reminding me of who I actually am when I thought I wasn’t ready. My dear friend, Gabes Torres, for her Heritage workshop that gave me the big push in trying on my Corean name with my close group of friends back in April. And Michelle MiJung Kim (she doesn’t know me, I just follow her on IG) who repeatedly offered so much emotional labour in speaking about the importance of our Corean names after the Atlanta shooting.
On spelling: I choose to spell Corea with a C to recognize the history of Japanese colonialism in my peoples’ history.