Also, it takes about a minute for the water to heat up, which means that the next time I take a shower I wouldn’t have to reach up for the shower head to let the cold water run. Yes, I like to avoid cold water. By the way, I am Asian but personally do not use a basin. Several of my relatives still do though.

When I asked the 부원장님 at our academy about it today she said that it was just something that was passed down from a long time ago (”our grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents”). She then took a guess and said that maybe it’s because a butterfly and cat move in a similar fashion. She mimiced this for me and seemed to indicate it had something to do with flittering motions, or at least not progressing in a straight line.

A coworker said much the same thing — that the name comes from an association that was originally made many, many years ago and that she (and presumably everyone else) has no idea where it originally came from.

Between the painting and the responses I was given it seems like there’s a possibility that cats were kept as pets during the Joseon dynasty … though I’m obviously basing that theory on somewhat circumstantial evidence.

After coming home from work I looked up “김홍도 나비” on Google and came up with this site –

http://ask.nate.com/qna/view.html?n=5742439

- which contains the line “고양이가 나비와 노는 그림”은 생신 축하 선물이다. 중국어로 고양이 묘(猫)는 칠십 노인 모(모), 나비 접(蝶)은 팔십 노인 질(질) 자와 발음이 같다.

The first sentence mentions that the painting was a birthday gift but, unfortunately, my Korean is not good enough to make a good translation of the second. Something to do with the cat representing an elder at 70 years old and a butterfly representing someone at 80 years old due to the characters (자) and pronunciations (바름) being similar/ the same??

Assuming my translation is somewhat accurate (ha!) I wonder if that has any relation with this particular naming tradition. Maybe giving someone a cat named ‘나비’ is like showing your desire that the recipient lives to be 70, 80, or older?

I can’t help with your shower question, but I did want to mention that the family of my Taiwanese friend does the same thing in their showers. Interestingly, in both of the bathrooms in their house the sink is in one corner while the shower head is in another. I noticed that they also had a basin for washing, though my friend’s mother does take care of young children for her nieces and nephews.

A lot of Ancient Chinese drawings depict a cat and a butterfly together, because a cat is a homophone for an octogenarian, and a butterfly one for a man of seventy years old–by representing both together, you’re wishing the recipient to live to a ripe old age twice over. There might be a connection to the naming of cats (given as present to people whom you wished to live long, for instance).

As I said, it’s Chinese, but it might have crossed over (it’s one heck of a coincidence that both names are associated in both languages, to be sure).

I have to admit, I have always found it annoying to find the shower head placed by the faucet. Not enraging, but sort of annoying. But suddenly I stopped and asked myself, “Okay, you’re annoyed because it seems pointless, but it must be (or seem) pointful to everyone else if they’re all doing it.” So I thought I’d try to find out.

Bathing on the tile floor next to the bathtub seems very odd to me too. But then, I always hated this business of putting on (inevitably too-small) plastic slippers in the bathroom to keep the feet dry.

However, it does at least help me imagine how people can take a “shower” in a room with no shower curtain and still not get their clothes, perched wherever they are, wet. (A constant problem for me in my old places… now I have a tub, though!)

Charles: yeah, pets are modern, you’re right. But I had a monk naming a cat “나비” in a story set just in Sosa near the end of the 19th century — though if read as alternate history, it could be anytime in the last few hundred years — and having just maybe sorta sold it, I was suddenly wondering whether that moment it was anachronistic or not.

(Actually, I think I removed the bit where he calls the cat “Nabi” but I’m not sure…

Anyway…

1. I’ve always understood it be the actual 나비. The idea of it being a homophone doesn’t really make sense to me, to be honest. That would be like naming your dog “Spot” and then saying, “Yeah, but it’s not ’spot’ as in ‘mark,’ it’s a different ’spot.’” People usually don’t make up words that sound exactly like other words and yet have no inherent meaning. So, yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s the actual 나비, too.

2. No clue here. I’m not really a big fan of cats, and I don’t know anyone who owns a cat. I would bet that there are still unimaginative people out there naming their cats 나비, though.

3. As for how far it goes back, I have no idea, but I very much doubt that people were naming their cats at all in the late Joseon period, if they even had cats as pets. As far as I know (which, admittedly, is not very far), the idea of animals as pets is a fairly modern one here. Animals have always served a more functional purpose in Korea, I think, so I suppose it’s possible that cats were kept to keep away the mice, but I don’t know if they were actual pets that would requiring naming. This is all conjecture, though.

Heh. So that was probably no help at all. Moving on… the shower thing. Dude, I have no idea, but my wife does the same exact thing. She always leaves it on top of the faucet, and whenever I take a shower after her I always put it back in its holder. I didn’t even know it was such a widespread practice. I always figured that she left it on the faucet because it was easier just to leave it there. I never take the thing out of the holder and just use it like a normal shower, so it’s easier for me to leave it in.

I’m definitely going to ask my wife about this one when she gets home, though.

(Oh, one thing: I don’t buy the idea of letting the water drain out of the shower head–if you put the shower head in the holder and then turn off the faucet (or vice versa), the water will drain down from the head and out through the faucet. With the shower hose coiled or kinked, it’s actually less likely to drain.)