According to statistics from Seoul Family Court, some 110 foreigners who had taken Korean citizenship changed their names between October and the end of last year. Some 51 of them chose “Kim” as a family name, while 15 chose “Lee,” 14 chose “Park” and 11 chose “Choe.”
Oddly enough, this is the same order of the general population according to 2000 statistics released by the National Statistical Office. According to those stats, 21.6 percent of Koreans—some 9.92 million folk—had the last name of Kim. Another 14.8 percent had Lee, 8.5 percent had Park and 4.7 percent had Choe.
As for the bongwan (ancestral home), 96 chose Hanyang (i.e., Seoul), followed by Geumsan, Cheongju, Milyang, Wonju and Haeju. No new Andong Kims, I see.
Prior to 2005, very few naturalized Koreans adopted Korean names, but there’s been a major jump since then, with 1,474 taking new names in 2005 and 1,838 taking new names last year.
Of the 110 that did so between October and the end of last year, 77 were Chinese, while seven were Filipino, six were Bangladeshi, six were Vietnamese, five were Mongolian, five were Indian and four were Japanese.
In case you were wondering, when Korean family courts grant bongwan, they do so based on whether you have relatives here. If you do, they use that family origin. If not, they use the location of the court. I assume that was the case with many of the Hanyang names, although this probably wasn’t the case with the Haeju one. Interestingly, Hanyang Kim was an extremely rare name in Korea—there were only three individuals with that name in the entire country in 2000. Now there are around 100.
On a personal note, I’ve sometimes thought about adopting a Korean name (not that I’m a Korean citizen) since my own name—Robert Koehler—is a terribly difficult name for many Koreans to pronounce. On the other hand, however, it IS the name my parents gave me, and it would seem a rather grievous violation of Confucian filial piety to go about changing it.
While we’re on the topic of family names, a couple of days ago the Weekly Chosun magazine ran a piece that posed a rather interesting question—what the hell was the family name of famed Goguryeo general Euljumundeok? This is an important question (kinda) because there’s a major road named Eulji-ro running through downtown Seoul, but nobody’s quite certain if “Eulji” was his correct family name. Some think his family name was just “Eul,” and the “ji” was an honorific suffix. Others—citing Chinese texts—say his family name might have been “Ulji,” which would suggest he could have been a naturalized Gogureo-in of the Xianbei tribe (a nomadic people of southern Manchuria). The Weekly Chosun points out, of course, that Goguryeo at the time was a multi-ethnic state that occupied much of Manchuria, so perhaps he wasn’t “naturalized” at all, but rather just a Goguryeo subject of the Xianbei ethnicity.
Unfortunately, there’s no historical record discussing the good general’s family background, so your guess is as good as the Weekly Chosun’s.
4 Comments
Though I wouldn’t consider naturalizing, I’ve had a Korean name for a long time. And I didn’t have to adopt one that had no relationship to my real name. Doing a quick study of etymology I found the Chinese character that is the meaning of my surname, and it just happens to be a Korean surname to boot. My forename also translates well, but Koreans find it quite humorous as they’d never give it to their kid.
Robert means bright fame and Koehler means seller or maker of charcoal. Probably could make a Korean name from that.
“what the hell was the family name of famed Goguryeo general Euljumundeok? ”
Before the Shilla unification of period and subsequent Sinicization of Korean names and vocabulary, the people inhabiting the peninsula had no last names. The last names of “Lee”, “Park”, and “Kim” are all adopted Sinicized names, adopted first, by aristocrats and royalty, then spread to the common people. The native Korean names of ancient history have no last names, but also they were pronounced totally different, with its origins non-Chinese. WIth names like
“Misaheun”, “Sadaham”, “Balgeonuri”, “Iri Kasumi”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_name
Prior to the adoption of Chinese-style names, Koreans had indigenous names, which were transcribed in Hanja. Except for royalty, most Koreans did not have family names. Native given names were sometimes composed of three syllables like Misaheun (미사흔; 未斯欣) and Sadaham (사다함; 斯多含). Under the influence of Chinese culture in the first millennium of the Common Era, Koreans adopted family names. These were limited to kings in the beginning, but gradually spread to aristocrats and eventually to most of the population.[18]
Goguryeo in Manchuria and northern Korea and Baekje in southwestern Korea had many non-Chinese family names. These often consisted of two characters and many of them seem to have been toponyms. Judging from Japanese records, some characters were pronounced not by their Chinese reading but by their reading in the native language (see Hanja). For example, Goguryeo General Yeon Gaesomun (연개소문; 淵蓋蘇文) is called Iri Kasumi (伊梨柯須弥) in Nihonshoki. Like cheon (천; 泉) in Chinese, iri would presumably have meant “fountain” in the Goguryeo language. Early Silla names are also believed to represent Old Korean words; for example, the name of Bak Hyeokgeose was pronounced something like “Balgeonuri” (발거누리), which can be translated as “bright world.”[19]
now they can all claim they are Yangbans.
‘Robert means bright fame and Koehler means seller or maker of charcoal. Probably could make a Korean name from that.’
how about ‘myeong yeon tan’ then? or why not be original and adopt a nickname like ‘hyokoseh’? how many koreans do you meet with that name? both my mother and father gave themselves western names but their official names are still the ones they got at birth.
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[...] Kim, Lee, Park are the most popular Korean surnames chosen by foreigners who have taken up Korean nationality and choose to change their names. - more from Robert Koehler, Marmot’s hole. Oiwan Lam [...]