FamiLee Life

What's In A Name :: Assimilation and Reclamation

On my drive into work today, I was listening to the band, Sun Kil Moon, on 89.3 FM. Sun Kil Moon is a band fronted by Mark Kozolek. I recently heard about this alt-style band from my friend, David, while visiting him in Chicago. We occasionally swap music to keep ourselves feeling young and hip. At any rate, the band is named after Sung Kil Moon, a former bantamweight boxing champion from South Korea. And as some of you know, I greatly enjoy the brute sport of boxing. But more intriguing to me, this morning, was the man's name. Sung Kil Moon.

Moon...Nowadays, I think of it as a very cool sounding last name. But when I was younger, I was embarrassed by the name Moon.You see, my middle name is Moon. I was quite young -- maybe 9 or 10 -- when I realized the ramifications of having an Asian sounding name. I already had been teased with songs that ridiculed Asians (ching chong chinaman) and having a middle name like Moon made me only more vulnerable to teasing. So, in my failed effort to assimilate, I used to tell classmates that my middle initial stood for Michael. I know, shameful, isn't it to have to create such a lie? Yet lie, I did.

At age 10, a kid just wants to fit in, to belong, to not stand out. Puberty is just around the corner and that is bad enough. To be different and, as such, vulnerable to exclusion is even worse. So for a few years, I became a Michael (well, my middle name at least).

But over time, like all good things, I grew to like/love my name.

I never understood why my parents gave me this middle name because my informal Korean name did not have Moon in it. So one day back in high school, I asked my mother why I had this middle name. She told me that when she was pregnant with me, my dad and she both had dreams about the moon. They felt it was a good sign, so they chose it as a middle name for me. Later, I realized that this dream might have been inspired by an event that occurred just 19 days before my birth when Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon.

So I have reclaimed my middle name. It's funny because if I had never asked my parents, I am not sure if I ever would have reclaimed it. I would not have denied it but I don't think I would have the pride that I now have.

Still, I am struck by the ease by which a White musician can choose to name his band after a South Korean and it sounds cool to the majority (Oh, that's different!). But for me, as a minority growing up in an all-White community, the same name carried such a weight of shame. Well, that folks is the privilege of Whiteness.

Posted by richlee at April 13, 2006 10:26 AM