[ks-open] Re: Korean family names

[Henny Savenije]

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Sorry I did find a website,
http://hanbat.chungnam.ac.kr/~s_atoz/culture13.html it says about names the 
following:

>Irum(Names)
>The most basic form of personal expression in the name. Many Americans of 
>ten ask Koreans "What's in a name?". A Korean name is made up of three 
>Chinese characters. Each character is pronounced as a single syllable.
>As our readers may already be aware of , Westerners will say their first 
>name first and their family name last. It is the opposite in Korea. We 
>always say our family name first and then the rest of our name. So out of 
>the three characters, the first character is the family name and the rest 
>os the first name. It is important to point out that the last name could 
>also consist of two characters.
>There is a great variety of first names, but there is a limit to the 
>number of last names. Presently in Korea, there are about 274 last names. 
>Out of this number, 44 are very rare and the last names such as Kim, Lee, 
>and Park account for approximately 45% of all the names in Korea.
>Since many people believe that a person's fate is influenced by the name, 
>there are instances where a name maker, instead of parents or 
>grandparents, will pick the name. "Changmyoungga" is a person whose sole 
>job is to pick names which will have good influences on the baby's fate.
>The origin of Korean last names is not clear. It is known, however, that 
>many Korean last names were derived from the names used in the early Three 
>Kingdom period in China.
>In the West most of the people call each other by their first names. 
>However, this is a little bit different in Korea. It is okay for family 
>members and close friends to call each other by their given names but for 
>the majority of other instances, this is very rare. For example, in a 
>family , kit is okay to call any person younger than you by their first name.
>But, in the reverse case, we have designated words for the older family 
>members.
>For example, we would call our older sister "onni" or "nuna", and our 
>older brother "oopa" or "hyong".
>Also in Korea, you rarely hear married couples addressing each other by 
>their first names. For example, if a married couple has a child named 
>"Hana", other will call her parents either "Hana appa" or "Hana omma". 
>This literally means Hana's father or Hana's mother.
>This is also true even in a professional setting. People will usually 
>address each other by their title or position.
>One aspect which is quite different from the West is that a woman after 
>marriage gets to keep her maiden name.


This one has some information too:
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~soon/essays/koreanname.html

This one is interesting too:
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2001/03/14/200103140045.asp

This too:
http://danielroy.tripod.com/cgi-bin/alternate/mongolia/Names.html

for the rest take a look at

http://www.google.com/search?q=Korean+names+Origin&hl=en&start=20&sa=N



Henny (Lee Hae Kang)
-----------------------------

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