@hongminhee@hollo.social

I write my name in Chinese characters: 洪民憙. In English I still include them, writing Hong Minhee (洪民憙) rather than the romanization alone.

Part of it is meaning: Chinese characters carry it, hangul doesn't. Mostly, though, it's about the direction of loss. You can derive a Korean or romanized reading from 洪民憙; you can't go the other way. Given 홍민희 or Hong Minhee alone, there's no recovering which characters were intended.

I don't much mind how my name gets pronounced. If a Chinese speaker reads it as Hóng Mǐnxī, or a Japanese speaker arrives at something different, that's fine. The characters are the same. Classical Chinese once worked this way across East Asia: one written text, many readings.

What I care about is the notation.

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