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| Oriental Brewery CEO Bruno Cosentino has a new Korean name "Ko Dong-woo." / Courtesy of Oriental Brewery |
By Ko Dong-hwan
A Brazilian executive at a major South Korean brewery made headlines Tuesday when he announced that he now had a Korean name. Oriental Brewery CEO Bruno Cosentino is now Ko Dong-woo.
The brewery, owned by Brazilian-Belgian transnationalbeverage and brewing company AB InBev, said Tuesday Cosentino got the Korean name from a professional naming office. The name was chosen after the office analyzed his Four Pillars of Destiny ― a Chinese conceptual term describing the four components that possibly define a person's destiny or fate ― and the phonetics of his family name.
"The name means ‘contribution to the East's development'," the brewery said. "It also means leading a company well by placing good human resources in the right spots."
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| Khan Mohammed Asaduzzman, active in South Korean TV, has Korean name "Bang Dae-han." |
Taking his seat on Jan. 1, Cosentino had his Korean name printed on his business cards. The company said he would start introducing himself as "Mr. Ko" in addition to his original surname.
"Just as Koreans going overseas come up with an English name to bond with people from across the world, it is our CEO's strategy to make himself a Korean name that will help him understand the Korean culture better and become friendly with Koreans more easily," the company said.
The brewery's former CEO Frederico Freire, also from Brazil, also took the Korean name Kim Dong-jin.
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| Ida Daussy, also "Seo Hye-nah" in Korea, joins a press conference for publication of her book at the French Embassy in Korea in Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, April 2007. / Korea Times file |
Other expatriates have not been shy about giving themselves Korean names. The Korean names are mostly based on an aspect of the names that could be interpreted based on meanings of the letters that make up the names, either Chinese or Korean.
Moreover, the names help the expatriates, who are surrounded by Koreans who often find it difficult to pronounce non-Korean names.
Mixing and matching certain letters, some expatriates discover a name that somehow sounds ideal and suggests a remarkable similarity with their identities based on ethnicity, profession, place of residence or original name.
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| Robert Holley, right, delivers a speech at a church in Sindang-dong district in Jung-gu, Seoul, in May 2006. His has Korean first name "Ha-il." / Korea Times file |
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| Valeri Sarychev's Korean name "Sin Eui-son" was made by his football fans in South Korea. / Korea Times file |
French celebrity Ida Daussy, who met her South Korean sweetheart and took Korean citizenship in 1996, got her Korean name Seo Hye-nah from an astrologist. The name, with the surname being her husband's, is based on Chinese letters meaning "to follow the image of a bright star and a beautiful mind." The TV personality said she regretted people knew her more by her French name than her Korean name.
Valeri Sarychev from Tajikistan, a football goalkeeping coach who moved to Korea in 2000, was named by his fans "Sin Eui-son," literally meaning "hands of god."
He said there "could not be a better name for a goalie."
American TV personality and lawyer Robert Holley, who acquired Korean citizenship in 1997, has a Chinese-based Korean first name "Ha-il." With the letters meaning "water" and the Arabic No. 1 respectfully, the word derives from the star's residential location seaside district of Yeongdo-gu in Busan, and his insistence that he be the first expatriate to have a name based on location.
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