[KS] dropping McCune-Reischauer for 20th/21st c. personal names

Frank Hoffmann hoffmann at fas.harvard.edu
Thu Dec 13 16:35:49 EST 2001


Dear Professor Ledyard and others:

It is a suggestion -- as indicated in the subject line -- to *drop* a 
rule, or better, to loosen the existing rule for personal names of 
20th and 21st century personalities of Korean descent who are already 
well introduced in one way or the other through the Western press. 
Other than what you and Mike pointed out, Koreanists have, as far as 
I can see (including myself) widely used the McR System for such 
cases. Your "Paik Nam-June" example doesn't apply here as it would, 
in this case, be strange to talk about a U.S. citizen and long-time 
resident of the U.S. (and before that of Japan and Germany) by using 
a romanization system for Korean. If you already go by what I was 
suggesting anyway, that's just fine .... but as I pointed out, from 
what I see is being published most Korea specialists (certainly so in 
Europe, but also in the U.S.) go pretty strictly by McCune-Reischauer 
in these instances as well. My posting was to suggest to drop this as 
it has become obsolete to do so.
I am somewhat confused by the rhetorical means you use in discussing 
this issue -- as if this where dear Frank's personal problem. That's 
not an appropriate, I think.

Frank





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