I Called My Friend the Wrong Name for Weeks

For weeks I called my friend by the wrong name. He just smiled and let it slide.

I called him See-oh-joon

We'd been messaging since before I ever came to Korea. He wrote his name as Seojun, so that's the name I knew.

I read it the way I'd read anything back home. See-oh-joon. Three syllables.

When we finally met in Korea, that's what I called him. He answered "yeah?" every time, so I figured I was saying it right.

A few weeks in, another friend called him from beside me. Seo-jun. Two syllables.

eo isn't two letters — it's one sound

That was the whole thing.

The romanization eo isn't an e followed by an o. It's two letters of the alphabet borrowed to write one Korean sound, ㅓ. English has no letter for the ㅓ sound, so one letter couldn't do the job.

Same with eu. It's the single sound ㅡ.

If you've ever sounded out Seoul as See-ool, you've already met this problem. I did that one for a long time too.

I asked him later why he never corrected me

I went straight to the friend whose name I'd been mangling. Why didn't you say anything?

"I knew who you meant, so it was fine."

Then he smiled and added that he was glad I was trying to say his name at all — the mistake never bothered him. He didn't want to call it out and make me feel awkward.

And honestly, I'd have done the same. If a friend learning English said my name a little wrong, I wouldn't stop them every single time to fix it.

So this was something I could have just asked. It's not that nobody corrected me — it's that I never asked.

My own name was a problem too

It cost me in the other direction as well.

Some cafes call out your name instead of handing you a buzzer. I asked them to write my name in Hangeul, but the spelling I gave them was off, and what they called out sounded nothing like me.

A few times I just stood there, not realizing that was my coffee. Twice I got it after it had gone cold.

Same story with lodging. The spelling on my passport and the name on my booking were subtly different, and it once took forever at the front desk.

Here's what it comes down to

"Don't read it like English" is too simple.

To put it precisely — romanization is notation, not English spelling. It's a system built to carry Korean sounds in the alphabet; it doesn't follow English pronunciation rules.

So reading it on English autopilot gets it wrong almost every time. eo, eu, ae, oe — all of them.

Once that clicked, I could take a decent first guess at names I'd never seen.

But people's names break the rules constantly

One thing worth knowing here: name spellings are the owner's call.

The same 서준 can be written Seojun, Seojoon, or Suh Jun. Going off-book isn't wrong — it's just how that person decided to spell it.

So the rules only help with your first guess. The way to be sure is to ask.

These days, whenever I see a new name — business card, message, whatever — I say it out loud once and check. Turns out that's all it ever took.