Ri 리 — Korean last name
Is Ri a Korean last name?
Yes. Ri (Hangul: 리, Hanja: 李) is a Korean family name recorded in the 2015 South Korean census with 240 holders, making it the #135 most common of the 191 surnames counted. Roughly one in every 207,107 South Koreans is a Ri. It is one of the rarest surnames in Korea — fewer than a thousand people carry it.
How to write Ri in Korean
In Hangul, Ri is written 리. Its Hanja (Chinese character) is 李. Unlike many Korean surnames, Ri has a single Hanja form, so every Ri in Korea shares the same character.
What does Ri mean?
The character 李 means plum tree (North Korean form of Lee). As with most Korean surnames, the meaning comes from the Chinese character rather than from the Korean sound, so it says something about how the name was first written down (often a place, a virtue, an object or a Chinese dynasty) rather than describing the family. Koreans rarely think about the literal meaning of a surname in daily life, but it matters for genealogy and for choosing given names that pair well with it.
How common is Ri?
Ri is ultra-rare Korean surname. Just above it in the rankings is Pan (278) and just below it is Cho (Chu) (236). For comparison, Kim, the most common surname, has 10,689,967 holders. All figures come from Statistics Korea's 2015 Population and Housing Census, which only counts surnames held by five or more people.
Spellings and romanization
Ri is the spelling most Korean families use on passports and in English. The official Revised Romanization (used by the South Korean government since 2000) is Ri, and the older McCune–Reischauer system gives Ri. The variety exists because Korean passport rules let each family choose its own romanization, so spellings drifted over generations of emigration; in Korean, every one of these is the same 리.
How to pronounce Ri
Ri (리) is pronounced roughly as the Revised Romanization "Ri" reads, with even stress on each syllable — Korean does not stress one syllable over another the way English does. Vowels are pure and short: "eo" is the "u" in "sun", "eu" is a tight "oo" with unrounded lips, and "ae" rhymes with "day".
Is Ri Chinese or Korean?
Both, in a sense — the character is shared, the family is not. Korean surnames were written with Chinese characters for over a thousand years, so nearly every Korean surname has a Chinese (and Vietnamese) reading: 李 is Lǐ in Mandarin and Lý in Vietnamese. A Korean Ri and a Chinese family with the same character are not related; they simply adopted the same character at different times and places. If someone spells their name "Ri" they are almost certainly Korean, because the Chinese and Vietnamese romanizations look different. See our full guide to Korean vs Chinese last names.
Related Korean surnames
Frequently asked questions about Ri
Is Ri a Korean or Chinese last name?
Ri as spelled is Korean (리). The Hanja 李 is also used as a surname in China and Vietnam, but with different romanizations (Lǐ in Mandarin, Lý in Vietnamese). The families are not related.
How many people have the last name Ri?
240 people in South Korea had the surname Ri (리) in the 2015 census, or under 0.01% of the population. That makes it the #135 most common Korean surname.
How do you write Ri in Korean?
Ri is written 리 in Hangul. In Hanja it is 李.
What does the Korean last name Ri mean?
The Hanja 李 means "plum tree (North Korean form of Lee)". Korean surname meanings come from the Chinese character the name is written with, not from the Korean sound.
Is Ri a rare Korean last name?
Yes. With 240 holders it ranks #135 of 191 — well outside the common surnames. See our list of rare Korean last names for others like it.
Source: Statistics Korea (KOSIS), 2015 Population and Housing Census, surnames by Hangul with five or more holders (total population 49,705,663). Hanja meanings from standard Hanja dictionaries. Check another surname.