Korean Name - Family Names

Family Names

There are approximately 250 family names in use today. Each family name is divided into one or more clans (bon-gwan), identifying the clan's city of origin. For example, the most populous clan is Gimhae Kim; that is, the Kim clan from the city of Gimhae. Clans are further subdivided into various pa, or branches stemming from a more recent common ancestor, so that a full identification of a person's family name would be clan-surname-branch. For example, "Kyoungjoo Yi(Lee)ssi"(Kyoung-Joo Lee Clan, or Lee Clan of Kyoung-Joo) and "Yeonan-Yissi"(Lee Clan of Yeonan) are, technically speaking, completely different surnames, even though both are, in most places, simply referred to as "Yi(Lee)". This also means that people from the same clan are considered to be of same blood, such that marriage of a man and a woman of same surname and "bon-gwan" is considered a strong taboo, regardless of how distant the actual lineages may be, even to the present day.

Traditionally, Korean women keep their family names after their marriage, but their children take the father's surname. In the pre-modern, patriarchal Korean society people were extremely conscious of familial values and their own family identities. Korean women keep their surnames after marriage based on traditional reasoning that it is what they inherited from their parents and ancestors, and cannot be changed. According to traditions, each clan publishes a comprehensive genealogy (jokbo) every 30 years. However, it is not uncommon for women to be addressed with their husband's surnames after marriage.

There are around a dozen two-syllable surnames, all of which rank after the 100 most common surnames. The five most common family names, which together make up over half of the Korean population, are used by over 20 million people in South Korea.