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Korean Naming Convention in Wikitree

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Contents

Introduction

The purpose of this page is to discuss Korean names and how they should be entered into WikiTree Profiles using the current WikiTree Policy for Name "Fields" and "Text Boxes". It should be noted, however, that due to the current limitations of WikiTree, the Family Name and Given Name will be reversed from the traditional order of writing and pronouncing the names. Suggestions have been made to modify WikTree to accomate different Family Name and Given Name order in languages such as Korean.[1]

Korean Names

A Korean name consists of a family name followed by a given name, as used by the Korean people in both South Korea and North Korea. In the Korean language, ireum or seongmyeong usually refers to the family name (seong) and given name (ireum in a narrow sense) together.

The traditional Korean family name typically consists of only one syllable. There is no middle name in the English language sense. Many Koreans have their given names made of a generational name syllable and an individually distinct syllable, though this practice is declining in the younger generations. The generational name syllable is shared by siblings in North Korea, and by all members of the same generation of an extended family in South Korea. Married men and women usually keep their full personal names, and children inherit the father's family name.

The family names of Koreans are subdivided into bon-gwan (clans), i.e. extended families which originate in the lineage system used in previous historical periods. Each clan is identified by a specific place, and traces its origin to a common patrilineal ancestor.

Early names based on the Korean language were recorded in the Three Kingdoms period (57 BCE – 668 CE), but with the growing adoption of the Chinese writing system, these were gradually replaced by names based on Chinese characters (hanja). During periods of Mongol influence, the ruling class supplemented their Korean names with Mongolian names.

Because of the many changes in Korean romanization practices over the years, modern Koreans, when using languages written in Latin script, romanize their names in various ways, most often approximating the pronunciation in English orthography. Some keep the original order of names, while others reverse the names to match the usual Western pattern.

Traditionally, Korean women keep their family names after their marriage, but their children take the father's family name. In the premodern, patriarchal Korean society, people were extremely conscious of familial values and their own family identities. Korean women keep their family names after marriage based on traditional reasoning that it is inherited from their parents and ancestors, and cannot be changed. According to tradition, each clan publishes a comprehensive genealogy (jokbo) every 30 years.

According to the population and housing census of 2000 conducted by the South Korean government, there are a total of 286 family names and 4,179 clans.

Common Names

Fewer than 300 (approximately 280) Korean family names were in use in 2000, and the three most common (Kim, Lee, and Park) account for nearly half of the population. For various reasons, there is a growth in the number of Korean Family Names.

Traditionally, given names are partly determined by generation names, a custom originating in China. One of the two characters in a given name is unique to the individual, while the other is shared by all people in a family generation. In both North and South Korea, generational names are usually no longer shared by cousins, but are still commonly shared by brothers and sisters.

Wikitree Name Convention

The convention listed below should be used for Korean profiles using the existing Wikitree Name Field Policy.[2] The first and last name will be inverted in the Profile title. However, using this convention will result in Category and other listings using the proper last name. See the profile for Kim Il-sung as the example used here.[3]

Field Description Sample
Proper First Name: Korean given name with hyphen. The hyphen is used for consistency with current standards. Il-sung
Preferred Name: not required, given name could be used
Other Nicknames: not required
Middle Name: Should always be blank for Korean names. Check the box indicating no middle name.
Last Name at Birth: Enter the Korean family name. Kim
Current Last Name: not required, Note: Korean women usually do not change their last names after marriage
Other Last Name(s): not required
Text The complete name in the order that it would be spoken. Include the Hanja or Hongul characters in parenthesis after the English transliteration for Profiles in English Kim Il-song (Hangul: 김일성)

Korean Nobility Names

Korean nobility during the dynasties that ruled the Korean Peninsula before 1900 had multiple names. The following is a suggestion for text content in the Biography section of the profile that would help to clarify names of Korean Nobility. This example is for King San Yi. Note: Kings did not have wives. Instead, they had consorts. Offspring are referred to as Issue, versus "children."

[[Category:Korea]][[Category:Joseon Dynasty]]
== Biography ==
:Korean Name
:Westernized: Yi San (Yi is the Family Name, San is the Given Name)
:Hangul/Hanja: 정조 正祖
:Courtesty Name: Hyeongun
:Temple Name: Jeongjo

Period of Reign: 1776-1800

Biographic Information goes here...……………………..

Posthumous Name:
first
* King Jeongjo Gyeongcheon Myeongdo Hongdeok Hyeonmo Munseong Muryeol Seongin Janghyo the Great of Korea
* 정종경천명도홍덕현모문성무렬성인장효대왕
* 正宗敬天明道洪德顯謨文成武烈聖仁莊孝大王

later <nowiki>* King Jeongjo Gyeongcheon Myeongdo Hongdeok Hyeonmo Munseong Muryeol Seongin Janghyo the Great of Korea
* 정조경천명도홍덕현모문성무렬성인장효대왕
* 正祖敬天明道洪德顯謨文成武烈聖仁莊孝大王

=== Consorts and their Respective Issue ===
# Queen Hyoui of the Cheongpung Kim clan (5 January 1754 – 10 April 1821) (효의왕후 김씨)
# Royal Noble Consort Ui of the Changnyeong Seong clan (6 August 1753 – 4 November 1786) (의빈 성씨)
## Yi Sun, Crown Prince Munhyo (13 October 1782 – 6 June 1786) (이순 문효세자)
## Unnamed Princess (1784)
## Unborn child (1786)
# Royal Noble Consort Su of the Bannam Park clan (8 May 1770 – 26 December 1822) (수빈 박씨)
## Crown Prince Yi Gong (29 July 1790 – 13 December 1834) (이공 왕세자)
## Princess Sukseon (1 March 1793 – 7 June 1836) (숙선옹주)
# Royal Noble Consort Won of the Pungsan Hong clan (27 May 1766 – 7 May 1779) (원빈 홍씨)
# Royal Noble Consort Hwa of the Namwon Yun clan (1765 – 1824) (화빈 윤씨)

Wikitree Policy

General Naming Conventions [4]

Use their conventions instead of ours

We aim to use the names that people themselves would have known and that would have been recognized in their own time and place.

This is true for the "official name fields", Proper First Name and Last Name at Birth, and it's also true for the "preferred name fields", Preferred First Name and Current Last Name. These are meant to be the names they would prefer, not the names we prefer to call them.

At first this may seem overly complicated. We know what we would prefer but often cannot know what they would prefer. However, creating a single worldwide family tree requires a universal standard. "We" depends on who is speaking and the language they're speaking in. Therefore, it cannot be universal.

For example, English-speaking WikiTree users know William the Conqueror. But French-speakers know Guillaume le Conquérant. Even if 90% of current WikiTree users speak English, William should be Guillaume in our database because he himself spoke French. We can all share one profile even though we don't share one language.

This applies for names with accented characters, and even for languages with non-Latin alphabets. WikiTree can accept most character sets, such as Cyrillic, Chinese, and Arabic.

Note that English translations can go in the less formal fields, such as Nicknames and Other Last Names. And biographies can be written in multiple languages. See the related page on Location Fields.

Location Categories[5]

The rules above apply to Category:Categories as well. For example, Ottawa, the capital of Canada, used to be called Bytown. So, someone who lived there before 1855 would have called it Bytown, not Ottawa. That person should go in Category:Bytown, Ontario. Someone born after 1855 should go in Category:Ottawa, Ontario. (Note that Category:Bytown, Ontario is a subcategory of Category:Ottawa, Ontario so the people born before and after 1855 won't be completely separated from each other.) For more information on location names in Category:categories, see Category Names for Regions.

Also see the G2G discussions:

We used to recommend using the native language for all location-based categories. However, this involved a lot of difficulties, particularly when a location had multiple official languages. So, we switched to having parallel categories in multiple languages.

Sources

  1. #NamePolicy
  2. #NamePolicy
  3. #NamePolicy, The MR transliteration for names is most commonly used, see #MR
  4. Help:Name_Fields#General_Naming_Conventions
  5. #LocationCategory

Prepared by

G. Moore, Jul 2, 2018

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Categories: North Korea | South Korea | Korea