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When this author mentioned that he would be moving to Korea, he was told that he would soon have lots of friends named "Kim." Due to lack of prior contact with Korea or Korean people, he had no idea what this meant, but shortly after arrival on the peninsula the full reality became clear. According to Korean government statistics, fully 3,102,537 households, or 9,925,949 people, share the surname 金, written in Hangeul as 김, and usually Romanized as Kim, but occasionally as Gim or even Kym.
For a nation with a population of over 48 million, Korea does not have that many family names – in fact, less than 300 all told. This is interesting, when compared with a nation like the Netherlands, which only adopted surnames when forced to by Napoleon in 1811, and which has over 100,000 different names.
According to government statistics for the year 2000, 54 percent, or well over half of the population of the Republic of Korea has one of five family names: Kim (김), Lee (이), Park (박), Choi (최) or Chung (정). Their respective percentages of the population are 21.6, 14.8, 8.5, 4.7 and 4.4, respectively. Rounding out the top ten family names (64.1 percent of the population in total) are Kang (강), Cho (조), Yoon (윤), Chang (장), and Lim (임).
According to this page which gives a ranking of all Korean surnames, there were 286 surnames registered in the year 2000, compared to 274 in 1985 and 258 in 1960. Some of the least common surnames belong to only a handful of people each.
There are about a dozen "double-barreled" surnames, composed of two syllables and two Chinese characters. The most common of these is Namkoong (남궁), which comes in at 93rd in the league table of family names, at 18,743 people. Then there is Hwangbo (황보), Jegal (제갈), Sakong (사공), Sunwoo (선우) and a few others. These names can be tricky to non-Koreans upon first encountering them, especially if the person has a single character given (first) name. The foreigners, expecting all Korean names to have a single character family name and a two character first name, can easily be confused.
This useful site also has information on the various Romanizations of Korean surnames. Some names such as 이 and 정 have many different alternatives, because no system of Romanization is perfectly adequate to capture the sound in Latin orthography.
There are also examples of surnames taken by foreigners throughout history who became naturalized Korean citizens. Most of these were Chinese, although there were some Japanese, a Mongol, A Uighur, a Jurchen, an Arab and a Vietnamese example, too.
One thing to bear in mind is that not all Kims are the same. Surnames are divided up into regional clans (bon-gwan) based around a clan center or origin. So there are Gimhae Kims, Gyeongju Kims, Gwangsan Kims and Gimnyeong Kims. Similarly, there are Lee clans based in Gyeongju, Jeonju and Seongju. Historically, there was a law in Korea forbidding people from the same clan from marrying each other, but now that it is no longer applied. You can see all 216 registered clans in ranked order here.
All Korean family names are represented by Chinese characters because, while historically Korea had its own naming conventions, the Korean aristocracy adopted the Confucian naming conventions used by neighboring China during the fifth century onwards. Over time, Chinese family names were adopted by the entire population. Because many of the names have been used for so many centuries, they have become fully Koreanized. Consequently, more recently arrived names like Maeng, Ma, Ka, Bing, and Jegal sound clearly Chinese to Korean ears. This page shows all the Chinese characters (Hanja) for Korean surnames arranged alphabetically according to their Hangeul spelling. Sometimes one Hangeul or English spelling can be used by a number of different family names – such as Yoo (four different names).
Family names used in North Korea are the same as those in South Korea, although clan origin is no longer seen as important there. Also, some names that begin with a vowel sound when written in Hangeul in South Korea, such as 이 and 임, begin with the velar flap sound "riyeul" (ㄹ) in North Korea, namely 리 and 림.
Unlike in many western countries, Korean women do not take their husband's surnames upon marriage but children inherit their father's surname.
By Jacco Zwetsloot
Korea.net Staff Writer & Editor
