Patti Kim: My name is Patti Kim, but I wasn't born Patti Kim. I was actually born Ryang-Hee Kim. When my mom got her US citizenship, we were allowed to give ourselves new American names.

The reason why I chose Patti was because, as a kid, we used to have this Korean album, a record album of a famous singer from Korea and her name was Patti Kim. My parents brought that album over from Korea when we immigrated and that was the only image of a Korean woman, because there just weren't any Asian women images on magazines or television. I remember as a kid staring at her and knowing she was called Patti Kim and just admiring her. So when the opportunity came up for me to actually change my Korean name to an American name, I chose Patti Kim.

My Korean name is Ryang-Hi Kim and it was really rough to grow up with that name because my father misspelled my Korean name when he registered us coming to America. So he spelled it R-Y-A-N-G. So for some years in early grade school, my teachers could not pronounce R-Y-A-N-G correctly. They would pronounce it Rye-ang or Rying and I had to correct them and it took a lot of humiliation, I guess, for me try to bear that and then try to correct my teachers. So when the chance came up for me to just have a simple name, it was Patti Kim.