Ever since I started to write in English and spelled out my name So-Rim Lee with a hyphen between "So" and "Rim," so many people have asked me why I needed that big line between the two letters of my name. Most seemed to generally assume that I spelled my name the way it is because I first started doing so or because that is my official name printed on my passport. But I got so many queries regarding the necessity of the hyphen especially since I renewed the domain of this very website from Oceanflow.org to So-RimLee.com, with a distinct and in-your-face presentation of that horizontal line in between the first two letters of my name. As opposed to the popular belief, I have a concrete reason to why I need to spell my name So-Rim instead of Sorim or So Rim, and here it is:

So-Rim Lee is, like most Korean names, originally comprised of Chinese letters. They are 昭 (So: "bright") 林 (Rim: "forest") 李 (Lee: surname derived from a general denomination of a particular family of plum trees), and So-Rim Lee, or 李昭林, takes on the meaning of "bright forest."[1] It should be noted that Chinese letters are often referred to as "characters" since they derive from pictographs, and pictographs derive from pictures, or graphic images that are boiled down to modern-day ideograms by a combination of repeated usage, tradition, and the passing of time. And it is quite an ordeal to translate or transcribe these ideograms into the English alphabet system. The common error that could happen is:

1. So-Rim misspelled as Sorim, and my initials turning into "SL (Sorim Lee)" instead of "SRL (So-Rim Lee)," which is a blunder in itself as "SL" is not true to the original meaning of the name, "bright forest." Addressing me Sorim is equivalent to calling me "bright" with the forest literally taken out of the picture.

2. So-Rim misspelled as So Rim, and hence my name turning into "Miss So Lee" with "Rim" as my middle name. This is the most common mishap I've experienced throughout my life, since a predominent amount of the Western inscription systems don't allow hyphens in between letters of a single name.

For these reasons, I take on the pains to include the hyphen in my name, and even in my domain. This site is So-RimLee.com, not SorimLee.com. Names are one of the most fascinating aspects of the innumerable forms of human language, and every person has a right to claim his own distinct place of his own. Shakespeare induced Juliet to say, "What's in a name?" and immediately killed her and her beloved for their forsaken namesakes. (An overstatement, I know, but-) And I laud his work.

[1] I believe that a name can say so much, even to the point where it builds a path for a person to walk on through the journey of life. And "bright forest," to me, is an oxymoron. A dense, healthy forest should be dark, although most people don't seem to give this idea much thought. As a "bright forest" myself, I am proud to have an oxymoronic name and is empowered to say that I have a humorous, if not slightly flawed, twist to my personality that has allowed me to live up to my name.