My Name Is

“Hi, my name is Rumi.”

Yes, that’s my name, Rumi.  Since I came to Barcelona, I have met a lot of new people and I introduced myself thousand times.  (I’m kinda getting tired of it, I need a name card… )

When I introduce myself to foreigners, sometimes they get interested about my name.  The most surprising and frequent thing is that many people said to me that my name doesn’t sound like typical Japanese name because of this famous Persian poet in the 13 century : Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī.

Rumi – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi

Since I came to Barcelona, I have been told by many people, “Ah!  I know your name!  You have same name as a famous historical person!  So cool!!”  Actually, I didn’t know at all about this historical poet “Rumi” until I came to Barcelona.  But now I am so glad to have same name as such a great person.  It is a great honor and also very useful, because some of new friends can remember my name quickly.

By the way, as I am Japanese, my name is written in Japanese character.  My friends usually ask me how to write it in Japanese.  Well, my name is written like this : るみ .  And then people ask me, “Your name doesn’t have Chinese character, why?” or “Your name looks very simple but does your name have any meaning?”  Actually, even in Japan I was asked this questions sometimes, because a majority of people have Chinese character in their name (it is called kanji).  My answer is always simple : My name doesn’t mean anything special, and my parents didn’t give me a name with Chinese character because it’s easier to write.  Well, actually there was a little story though.  Since my father has a name with a difficult kanji, he didn’t want me to have same thing.  So he gave me a name which is written in hiragana, which is the easy character.  And also he thought hiragana is good because it has some curve and circle in my name and it looks cute.  That’s all.

Some of my friends said that it is a little pity that my name doesn’t have kanji nor important meaning, but actually I don’t think so.  Because it is not so exceptional thing that not having kanji in a name.  Furthermore, thanks to my parents I have never had trouble when I take exam (I can write my name real quick and I can save a few seconds for the questions than other students haha!).  Since not many people have hiragana name, it is very easy to find my name from any kind of list with hundreds of people.  And as I said in the beginning, thanks to the coincidence, it doesn’t take fifty or sixty years for my foreign teacher and friends to remember my name.  Conclusion, I really love my name.

Last week I went to Starbucks Coffee for the first time in Spain.  A clerk asked my name for writing it on a cup, so I answered with confidence:

“My name is Rumi.”

 

I think she needs a roommate.

 

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