Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Underwaterbob]

[toph]

@jvalmer

Well, both 전 and 천 can be romanized into "Chun." But whatever, since they're both last names in Korean.

As for the previous poster...
You're correct in saying that these people descended from yangban, but not ALL of them have. The common family names, as I explained before, were adopted as a quick response by the people during King Tae-Jo's reign. During his time, he mandated the use of a surname, and many yangban created the common family names (e.g., Kim).

But at the same time...many of the commoners went with these family names as well. So just because someone today has the last name Kim, doesn't necessarily mean they were descended from one of the original yangban, or does this mean they've descended from one of those commoners. It's kind of hard to tell as there's no differentiation in the last name. The person would have to do extensive family research to see if they were really tied to yangban. That is, if they wanted to find out.

So for the very popular names in Korea (e.g., Kim, Park, Lee, Choi...), these were first adopted during King Tae-Jo's time by BOTH common and nobles families. There wasn't any differentiation between the social classes as far as last names were concerned, and that's why it's so hard to tell today if a person is a descendant from yangban--especially if they have a common name. But, the basic point is just because they have a common name doesn't mean they descended from common people. Also, the common names did not originate with one person, but rather they originated at the same time with several un-related families. Thus, the huge amount of people with the last name Kim, for example.

[nautilus]