(0)(0)(0)(0).jpg/dims/resize/740/optimize) |
What's in a name? I'm not a fan. I remember faces better than names. However, I'm likely wrong. Names show individuals. They honor family ties and lineages, at least partially. They stand for dreams of parents and families. They project purposes, religious and varied. I'm going to write about the Korean practice of using name seals or chops or dojang.
Name chops are seals that people use to sign or stamp official and personal documents. These seals go by the words ingam or sirin. They stand for one's name and represent it legally. Even though written and electronic signatures have taken over in many ways, Koreans still use name chops and value them. Many people have a seal for official documents and a second for daily use. One buys a stamp pad in red for inking the seal each time it's used.
The seals or chops themselves can be simple, like mine, made of wood or stone. Others use more beautiful materials like jade or ivory, bronze or gold. I found one website that markets dojang for newborns, carved or handpainted on stone. There's a video of someone making a name chop on Youtube too.
When I started to visit Korea regularly, my friend took me to a shop near Insa-dong that makes seals. My chop doesn't have Korean or Chinese characters but instead my Romanized initials. It's still a prized possession for me, and one I use occasionally.
Koreans have used name chops for hundreds of years. Korean kings used gugin chops to sign and receive official documents from China. According to Wikipedia, when Korea became an independent nation in the 20th century, it designed an official governmental name chop or guksae, as a state seal. The history of nations shows a wide variety of symbols and practices to show the name of a country, to represent its sovereign authority.
I've read that today, Korea uses a state seal that is in its fifth version. The Ministry of the Interior website describes it as the product of much work and made of iridium, a metal I didn't know existed.
Korean scholars and artists use other seals on their artworks. I have a wonderful painting of a Korean landscape and a beautiful wall hanging of horses playing that show name seals of various types.
Korean seals today mainly use Hangeul, the Korean alphabet. In the past, they used hanja (Chinese characters). In the past, Koreans wrote in Chinese characters. This shows China's influence and the modern independence and development of Korea. Hangeul is a marvelous technology. The linkages to China remain important, historically and otherwise. People talk about the decline in use of hanja, and my friends of how few Chinese characters they know compared to their parents or grandparents. How we write names changes as a work of language and politics or government overtime.
A name stands for a person and his or her family. Yet, no name or seal captures identity, or one's lineages, completely. All cultures truncate names, typically using the surname of one's father. Korea has changed the family registry, but names still shorten personal identity. Nonetheless, Korean seals picture the way that tools combine conventions of naming with the arts to form a technology for self-representation.
Now, near the end of 2016, dear friends, remember the great seal of Korea, with its word Daehanminguk. As it continues to sound in the busy streets and quiet forests of the great country of South Korea, all Korean citizens and friends of Korea take part in its name. The design of the Korean national seal contains the phoenix and beautiful mugunghwa or national flower of Korea. This seal shows the eternal rising in life amid the beauty of a Rose of Sharon. Korea's guksae says much to name Korea, Koreans, and the good. Oh my Korea, the phoenix shall continue and rise to meet the flowers of spring.
Bernard Rowan is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University, where he has served for 23 years. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University. Reach him at browan10@yahoo.com
![[ANALYSIS] China's ban on Micron tests Washington-Seoul alliance](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/1785a57b07ae45a7b7db49fdf4acd720.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
![[INTERVIEW] Long-awaited extension of Korean Pavilion at Venice Biennale to be pushed forward](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/d8d5090875824ce08a90bb2c5a8f8c05.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
