Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Name Game



I never realized until I started traveling how many American names are one syllable. I have a group of guys that travel regularly with me and most of them have single syllable names. This realization is really driven home to me when I have to introduce the group. It goes something like this, “Hi, I’m Tim, this is Tom, Jim and Dan. (On one trip to Ghana we were asked if we were Chinese. I guess it had a certain ring to it) On one trip we had Ray, Rod, Rob and Bob.

Another interesting thing occurs occasionally with names. I remember on one trip to Vietnam we had two guys travelling with us whose names had Vietnamese phonetic equivalences. I discovered this when I caught a young Vietnamese assistant giggle during an introduction of our team then quickly try to hide it. Later when I saw her alone I asked her what she heard in Vietnamese when they were introduced. In that case she heard the introduction of Dr. Hungry and Mr. Reindeer.

I was thinking about this on my recent flight to Cambodia and going through the names of the guys that would be with me. It’s all fun and games when your own name doesn’t have a phonetic equivalence, and surprise… either does my colleague Ray. But my good friend and often travel bud, Dan Cooney is another story. In Khmer, the language of Cambodia “Cooney” sounds like “Ku Nee” (I may have the spelling wrong, but then we’re talking phonetics, not spelling).

Jokingly, I was going to send him a text to cancel his plans to join me part way through my trip stating that his name had some terrible meaning, but instead of making up something I decided to ask our Cambodian host if “Ku Nee” meant anything in Khmer.

And this is where reality get’s better than make-believe. You can only imagine how happy I was when he responded that “Ku” meant “Ass” and “Nee” meant, “is here”. I could hardly wait to introduce my “former” friend as Dan “Ku Nee”.

2 comments:

  1. My gut hurts from laughing so hard. That is so funny. Ku Nee will be forever stuck in my head - can't wait to see Dan.

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  2. KuNee is my friend also. Now that you've put that image into my head, I think I will have to smack you.

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