Family Names
| Hangul | Hanja | Revised | MR | Common spellings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 김 | 金 | Gim | Kim | Kim |
| 리 (N) 이 (S) |
李 | Ri (N) I (S) |
Ri (N) Yi (S) |
Lee, Yi, Rhee, Rhie, Reeh, Yie, Ee |
| 박 | 朴 | Bak | Pak | Park, Pak |
| 최 | 崔 | Choe | Ch'oe | Choi |
| 정 | 鄭 丁 |
Jeong | Chŏng | Chung, Jung |
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.
Read more about this topic: Korean Name
Famous quotes containing the words family and/or names:
“Family values are a little like family vacations—subject to changeable weather and remembered more fondly with the passage of time. Though it rained all week at the beach, it’s often the momentary rainbows that we remember.”
—Leslie Dreyfous (20th century)
“We rarely quote nowadays to appeal to authority ... though we quote sometimes to display our sapience and erudition. Some authors we quote against. Some we quote not at all, offering them our scrupulous avoidance, and so make them part of our “white mythology.” Other authors we constantly invoke, chanting their names in cerebral rituals of propitiation or ancestor worship.”
—Ihab Hassan (b. 1925)