What's In a Name?

I love translation of words from English to Korea, and what certain English words sound similar to in Korean. Once in a while my kids will get curious about me and start asking all sorts of questions, "Where are you from?" "Are you married?" "How old are you?" "What is your Korean name?"

They are always baffled when I say I don't have a Korean name and ask me why not, which I then try to explain that I don't speak Korean and I wasn't born in Korea, so I was never given one. This usually leads into a discussion about my full name, along with my mother and father's name because they don't understand the middle name concept, nor which name is the name that everyone in the family has. Usually I explain this by writing everyone's name on the board. One of my classes found my middle name, Barbara, quite funny. Then they started calling me Barbari... Usually when this happens I go to one of the Koreans and ask what it could possibly sound like.

Turns out in Korea, a barbari person is someone who goes around flashing people. That's right, Diana Flasher Ratz. It's one of those things where you smile, laugh about it for a few seconds and then try and get them back to conjugating verbs or whatever it is they happened to be doing before hand. Today one of my kids came in and said "Diana teacher I told my mom your name is Diana Barbari Ratz and she laughed." So great, now all of my kids, and their parents are going to be referring to me as Barbari...thanks mom, thanks dad, for the excellent middle name ;)