Talk:List of Korean given names

Comment

The "Overall Ranking" section does not reflect any actual occurrences. Rather, it presents the most frequent/queried name statistics from a private company. Interestingly, the names are mostly female.128.32.131.47 (talk) 08:58, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I removed that section for now. Will look for a better source. quant18 (talk) 09:48, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Meaning?

Most of the Western given name pages have an etymology or a definition of the meaning of a name, but I don't see this information on the articles for Korean given names. Is there some resource (print or online) that could offer the derivation of a name, whether it is a variant on another name or a name from history or myth?

Right now, the sections on Korean names are just list of words without any context. For a nonKorean speaker, they are just syllables with no meaning offered. If meaning could be added into these pages, their value would be greatly enhanced. Newjerseyliz (talk) 18:47, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. It would enhance the usefulness of this article greatly if the significance of the names were given, assuming Korean given names have any significance. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 15:18, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, aside from a very small proportion of indigenous names like Areum or Sora, most Korean names don't have a single fixed meaning; they're formed from a combination of two Sino-Korean syllables, each corresponding to one of dozens of different hanja with that pronunciation. It's not very practical to list hundreds of potential meanings for each name, especially not in an overview list like this. Both this list and the single name index pages generally have clickable hanja so you can go to Wiktionary and see the various meanings of those hanja.
It might be practical for the individual name index pages to list the meaning of each combination of hanja which is actually attested (e.g. corresponding to a notable person in Wikipedia), but that runs into a second problem: even knowing the meaning of each hanja in the name, you might interpret the name as adjective+noun, verb+noun, two separate nouns, a compound noun, etc. And some "interpretations" of names are impressionistic at best; this isn't just a problem for English speakers but even for Korean speakers (see, e.g., Tae-hee for an example). quant18 (talk) 03:02, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that interesting information. It would be useful if it could be worked into the article (or the one, if there is one, on Korean naming conventions, with a link from this article). It may be worth observing that, although Western names generally have etymologies that trace them back to ancient meanings like "Bright Spear" or "Yahu Is My Strength", as far as current usage is concerned most of them are essentially meaningless. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 15:03, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Unisex"

I know I'm fighting popular usage here (at least with regard to hair-cutting salons), but, strictly speaking, "unisex" means "single-sex", and so should apply to names that are suitable for boys or for girls, but not equally suitable for both. The latter category, instead of "Unisex", should be designated, "Either sex", or perhaps "Dual-sex". (The nearest equivalent to "unisex" would be "bisex", but that has other implications.) J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 15:26, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, true; you may want to bring this up at WP:ANTHROPONYMY or WP:CFD. 03:02, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

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Not exhaustive

The tables of two-Hanja-names have more gaps than entries (about 450 entries in almost 3'000 cells), but a gap does not mean that this combination does not occur. I'm married to a Hye-Sook (by birth, she has legally changed her given name into a biblical one), and I remember having met a Korean named Myung-Sik. The cells of both names are empty in the tables. I don't think that I have stumbled over every such instances.

Why not just give a List of syllables, and state that a combination of two of them makes a Koren given name (and notice that some are frequent while other are rather a sort of exception)? Or maybe two lists, one for the first and the other for the second syllable ...

--Helmut w.k. (talk) 03:45, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The tables are not inclusive of all possible name combinations. I am aware it is an issue, however there hasn't been any discussion on improvements, so I cannot say if changes will be made in the future. LollaRJ (talk) 05:04, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

'Mirae'

Why is the name 'Mirae' in the Native name? Mirae is from Sino-Korean word 未來 OceaneGoWon (talk) 20:31, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the heads up, 'Mirae' has been moved to a more appropriate section. LollaRJ (talk) 05:04, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Gender of names

It would be helpful if next to each name the gender with which it is usually used appeared in parentheses. It's better than looking up a name and then seeing that it's for a girl instead of a boy. Thank you 90.166.8.54 (talk) 14:53, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded. Or, more practically, make two lists and file male and female names under each of them. Damn me (talk) 20:50, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This article should be deleted

Koreans do not have culturally common names like John or Muhammad. A Korean given name can literally be a combination of pretty much any hangul and/or hanja (as long as it does not mean/sound something negative). In other words, Korean given names are an open set by nature. This article will never be complete.

See also: a quotation from https://improvemandarin.com/most-popular-chinese-names/

China has a unique baby-naming culture. There is really not a name pool or established list in the Chinese language like what we have in the Western (and many other) cultures. Chinese names can be infinite combinations of any of the 90,000 characters from the “character library”, and can take any meaning. Each Chinese name is individually crafted.

This also applies to Korean given names (especially ones that have hanja). 172.56.232.124 (talk) 08:43, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, this article contains possible original research. For example,

  1. the "Names derived from Sino-Korean words" section currently says that the name 정원 is from the common noun meaning "garden" (hanja 庭園). In some cases this could be true, but there is absolutely no guarantee that this is always true. People named 정원 may have different hanja (i.e. unrelated to the common noun).
  2. the table of "mixed names" under the "Native Korean names" section currently says that the name 은비 is from Sino-Korean 은 + native Korean 비. In some cases this could be true, but there is absolutely no guarantee that this is always true. 비 may have hanja too.
  3. this article also mentions the gender of each name, but there is no guarantee that this is always true either. I don't deny that there is some tendency, but there is no definite answer.

172.56.232.124 (talk) 23:45, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Major overhaul of this article

After some thoughts, I decided to apply the following to this article.

  1. Any name that is added to this list must include a link to an "existing" page, which is either a disambiguation page for that particular name or an article about a person who goes by that name.
  2. Do not add anything besides names. No meaning, etymology, gender, categorization, etc.
    • Korean given names are usually made-up words. That is, a certain name written in hangul usually does not have a "fixed" meaning, etymology, gender, etc.

See also what I wrote above (#This article should be deleted). 172.56.232.143 (talk) 20:03, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why no categorization ? The current formatting feels incredibly hard to read through. Also, why is 수미 separate from the other names which start with 수 (among others that have this issue because of variations in romanization)? 2600:4040:57E4:8F00:64DD:98A8:F219:5030 (talk) 14:05, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I re-sorted the list according to the hangul spelling. 172.56.232.124 (talk) 03:34, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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