<p>A South Korean elementary school whose name means "shit" has decided to adopt a more fragrant moniker, school officials said today.<br /><br />Many Korean names and words are based on Chinese characters, so when rendered in the Hangul alphabet they can have the same spelling, but multiple meanings.<br /><br />The unfortunate consequence for the Daebyun Elementary School in Busan is that human faeces are the first thing that come to mind when Koreans hear its name.<br /><br />"Are you from Poop School?" was a typical taunt students and former pupils have endured for 55 years, reports said.<br /><br />They have mounted a campaign to change the name, gathering more than 4,000 signatures since April, a school official who declined to give her name told AFP.<br /><br />"We want to have a pretty school name," read a banner put up on the school wall by the students and their parents.<br /><br />A school committee will choose among three options next week and submit a request to local authorities to change the name, she said, with permission expected to be granted from the spring term next year.<br /><br />One of them, Haeparang or sea waves, would flush away the stench of the past, while the other two are geographically based.<br /><br />Founded in 1963, the school, which has 77 students, was named after a village called Daebyun-ri, a shortening of the nearby Daedonggobyunpo port, or Daedong Warehouse Coast.<br /><br />The Kyunghyang Sinmun daily said other schools also have embarrassing homographs, including Jungja (sperm), Junggwan (seminal duct), Yadong (pornography) and Mulgun (prick).<br /><br />None of the four said they were considering changing their names, they told AFP.<br /><br />"Absolutely not," said an employee of the Mulgun school, in the southeastern county of Namhae. "That would be absurd."<br /><br />Last year, Japan's Kinki University bowed to years of foreign sniggering by changing its nomenclature to the less saucy-sounding "Kindai".</p>
<p>A South Korean elementary school whose name means "shit" has decided to adopt a more fragrant moniker, school officials said today.<br /><br />Many Korean names and words are based on Chinese characters, so when rendered in the Hangul alphabet they can have the same spelling, but multiple meanings.<br /><br />The unfortunate consequence for the Daebyun Elementary School in Busan is that human faeces are the first thing that come to mind when Koreans hear its name.<br /><br />"Are you from Poop School?" was a typical taunt students and former pupils have endured for 55 years, reports said.<br /><br />They have mounted a campaign to change the name, gathering more than 4,000 signatures since April, a school official who declined to give her name told AFP.<br /><br />"We want to have a pretty school name," read a banner put up on the school wall by the students and their parents.<br /><br />A school committee will choose among three options next week and submit a request to local authorities to change the name, she said, with permission expected to be granted from the spring term next year.<br /><br />One of them, Haeparang or sea waves, would flush away the stench of the past, while the other two are geographically based.<br /><br />Founded in 1963, the school, which has 77 students, was named after a village called Daebyun-ri, a shortening of the nearby Daedonggobyunpo port, or Daedong Warehouse Coast.<br /><br />The Kyunghyang Sinmun daily said other schools also have embarrassing homographs, including Jungja (sperm), Junggwan (seminal duct), Yadong (pornography) and Mulgun (prick).<br /><br />None of the four said they were considering changing their names, they told AFP.<br /><br />"Absolutely not," said an employee of the Mulgun school, in the southeastern county of Namhae. "That would be absurd."<br /><br />Last year, Japan's Kinki University bowed to years of foreign sniggering by changing its nomenclature to the less saucy-sounding "Kindai".</p>