The Controversial Hyphen in Romanized Korean Given Names
Donald W. Makarchuk · Studies in English Education · 2011
This article reports on a study designed to explore the need for hyphenation in Romanized Korean given names in light of governmental recommendations to the contrary. The study investigates the importance of Romanized Korean names to users and the effects on name use of omitting the hyphen in Romanized Korean given names. A questionnaire was used to collect the perceptions of 65 South Korean university students regarding their experiences with Romanized Korean names and their beliefs regarding given name hyphenation. To assess the usefulness of the hyphen, a survey of 36 names was constructed from a database of 995 Romanized Korean names. Responses from 79 English native speakers who were not familiar with Korean names or the Korean language were analyzed for given name hyphen placement. The results of the study highlight the importance of effective name Romanization and the utility of the hyphen for the participants. In addition, the results reveal that without the use of a hyphen 30% of the Romanized Korean given names were incorrectly syllabified. Errors were found at syllable boundaries consisting of vowel-vowel, consonant-consonant, vowel-consonant and consonant-vowel letter combinations. It is argued that these errors may be the result of the application of syllabification procedures appropriate to the participants’ native language, but which are prone to error when used on some Romanized Korean given names.