Royal and noble Korean last names

Every Korean dynasty had a royal surname, and most of them are still among the country’s most common names — which is exactly why they are so common. This page lists the surnames of Korea’s kings and queens by kingdom, the noble (yangban) clans that dominated the Joseon court, and what “royal surname” actually means for the millions of people who carry one today.

Royal surnames by kingdom

Silla: Park, Seok and Kim

Silla’s throne rotated among three clans. Park came first: Hyeokgeose, the founder, was said to have hatched from a gourd-shaped egg, and 朴 was created to name his line. Seok (석, 昔) followed with the fourth king, Talhae, whose legend involves a chest washed ashore. Kim began with Alji, found in a golden box in a forest, and from the fourth century the Gyeongju Kim held the throne almost continuously until Silla’s end. All three clans intermarried, and Silla queens came from the same three surnames.

Silla also gave Korea its second layer of prestige names: the six village chiefs of Gyeongju were granted the surnames Lee, Choi, Jung, Son, Bae and Seol — the “six surnames of Silla”. These were aristocratic rather than royal, but Gyeongju Lee, Gyeongju Choi and Gyeongju Jung remain among the most prestigious bon-gwan.

Gaya: the Gimhae Kim and the queen from India

King Suro founded Geumgwan Gaya in 42 AD and took the surname Kim. His queen, Heo Hwang-ok, arrived by ship — the Samguk Yusa says from the kingdom of Ayuta, traditionally identified with Ayodhya in India — and two of their sons took her surname, founding the Gimhae Heo. The Gimhae Kim is today the single largest clan in Korea with over four million members, and Gimhae Kim and Gimhae Heo traditionally did not intermarry because they share an ancestor.

Goryeo: the Wang dynasty that almost disappeared

Wang Geon unified the peninsula in 936 and his descendants ruled for 474 years. When Yi Seong-gye overthrew Goryeo in 1392, the Wang royals were hunted, and many changed their surname — adding a stroke to 王 to make 玉 (Ok) or 全 (Jeon), or hiding inside 田 (Jeon) and 車 (Cha). This is why several Ok, Jeon and Cha clans claim Goryeo royal descent, and why only about 25,000 Wangs remain today.

Joseon: the Jeonju Lee

The last royal house, the Jeonju Lee, produced 27 kings and two emperors over 518 years. Their ancestral seat is Jeonju in North Jeolla, where the royal portrait hall (Gyeonggijeon) still stands. The clan today has well over two million members — the largest Lee bon-gwan — and the Jeonju Lee Royal Family Association continues to hold rites at the Jongmyo shrine in Seoul. Being a Jeonju Lee is not the same as being descended from a king: most members descend from collateral branches that split off centuries before the dynasty was founded.

The clans that supplied queens

Under Joseon a handful of yangban clans held power through royal marriage. The Papyeong Yoon gave four queens, including the formidable Queen Munjeong. The Cheongsong Shim, Yeoheung Min (Queen Min, later Empress Myeongseong) and Cheongju Han each produced multiple queens. In the 19th century the Andong Kim and Pungyang Cho controlled the court so completely through in-law politics (sedo) that the period is named for them. These clans are still spoken of as “noble” in a way that goes beyond the surname.

Yangban surnames: what “noble” meant

The yangban were Joseon’s hereditary scholar-official class. Membership followed the clan, not the surname, so an Andong Kwon or a Papyeong Yoon was yangban while a Kim from an unregistered lineage was not. The prestige clans most often cited as yangban aristocracy include Andong Kwon, Andong Kim, Gwangsan Kim, Yeonan Lee, Deoksu Lee (Yi Sun-sin’s clan), Dongnae Jung, Pungsan Hong, Namyang Hong, Papyeong Yoon, Cheongju Han, Uiryeong Nam and Jinju Kang. By the late Joseon period the yangban share of the population had swollen to a majority through purchased genealogies, which is why almost every Korean family today can point to a noble ancestor and why the claim means less than it sounds.

What a royal surname means today

Not much, and Koreans know it. Because commoners took royal surnames en masse between the 15th century and 1909, sharing a surname with a king says nothing about descent. What still carries weight is the bon-gwan plus a documented genealogy — a Jeonju Lee with a jokpo tracing the line, a Gimhae Kim who can name the branch. Royal descendants’ associations exist for the Jeonju Lee, Gimhae Kim, Miryang Park and Gaeseong Wang, and the head of the Jeonju Lee house still performs ancestral rites for the Joseon kings twice a year.

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