Korean Job Discussion Forums

gang ah jee · Joined: 14 Jan 2003 Location: city of paper

Imho beaver's dropping science bringing up the chinese character thing.

let's take for example 'yong'. in a boy's name it will usually mean dragon. it's not as common in a girl's name but when it is used it has a meaning like 'beneficiant' or something. i forget. i doubt dragon yong would ever be used in a girl's name.

to determine whether a name will be for a male or female by sound, you have to look at which syllables are combined. I'm not sure if there are any syllables that are used exclusively for either sex, but there are generally masculine syllables ( eg 'seok'), generally feminine (eg 'mi) and neutral (eg 'min'). it's how they are combined that gives clues, but even still there's no way to be certain all of the time.

me, i like the korean names without chinese characters.

jh · Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Location: Seoul

gang ah jee · Joined: 14 Jan 2003 Location: city of paper

Pyongshin Sangja · Joined: 20 Apr 2003 Location: I love baby!

There are Korean men? They all carry purses, I can't tell the difference. As for women in the west with men's names, it means they are lesbians. Guys that have women's names all grow up to become serial killers.

HamuHamu · Joined: 01 May 2003 Location: Seoul

It's not the first names that I have trouble with. It's the family names.

Does no one in Korea think it strange or amusing that about 80% of the population is named either "Seaweed?" (Kim), or "One hundred" (Baek), or "Two" (Lee/Ee)??

I've wanted to ask some Korean friends this, but never wanted to offend anyone. Cause I don't mean it offensively, but just out of curiosity.

Cedar · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 3:20 am Post subject:

Contrary to the thoughts of an editor I am currently writing a paper for, most all Korean names can be unisex. Some names have a very masculine or feminine feel to them, and some sounds, such as 'ho' are almost always in boys names, 'sook' is almost always in girls names, 'mi' (which means beautiful, 'min' does not) is almost always in girls names, too.

But I've had boyfriends named Suhee, which is a VERY girly sounding name, even to other Koreans, and one of my best Korean women friends is Woldeok which sounds very masculine, even to Koreans. Most names are more of less unisex, with the average Korean able to take a good guess one way or the other -but not willing to bet money on it- cause the odds are only really in favor of guessing with names like 'Mihwa' (mi-beautiful, hwa-flower) and Chulsu (most common boys name, it's like John for Korea).

Cedar · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 3:39 am Post subject:

HamuHamu wrote:

Does no one in Korea think it strange or amusing that about 80% of the population is named either "Seaweed?" (Kim), or "One hundred" (Baek), or "Two" (Lee/Ee)??

Really family names don't have a meaning per se, they just let someone know (by looking at the chinese character) which family root the person is from on the father's side.

Actually Kim is the character for 'gold' (which is a bit confusing, as outside of usage in names, that character, is pronounced Geum). Baek is actually spelled with several Chinese characters, sometimes 'one hundred' and sometimes 'white'. Can't think of what Ee is at the moment. Sorry!

Koreans these days really don't consider which Kim or which Ee someone is. A few generations ago, you'd immediately ask, are you a Gyeongju Kim or a Kimhae Kim or whatever...

gang ah jee · Joined: 14 Jan 2003 Location: city of paper