Did I change my name?

No, not really. In fact, I simply corrected it. Corrected? Yes, you heard it right.

Most Korean names can be written with Chinese letters due to traditional reasons. My family name is, in Chinese, 李, which is pronounced as "lee" among Koreans. (I am not sure how Chinese pronounce the same letter.) We, however, usually drop the beginning "l" sound of a word (李 itself is not a word). Because it is our convention to put a family name before a given name, 李 actually comes first, and according to the rule, it is pronounced "yi".

Then, why in the first place did I use "Lee" instead of "Yi"? The fact of the matter is that the majority of Koreans who have the same family name as mine (my family name is one of the most common ones) choose to use "Lee" rather than "Yi" when their names need to be written in the western alphabet. The reason is not sure, but it is thought that when our ancestors need to spell their names in western alphabet about a century ago, they probably chose among the common English names. The three most popular Korean family names are "Gim" ("gi" is pronounced like "gi" as in "gi"ve), "Yi", and "Bak" ("Ba" is pronounced like "bo" as in "bo"ttom). However, they are commonly spelled "Kim", "Lee", and "Park", respectively in their passports.