History and origin of Korean last names

Korean surnames are about 1,500 years old at the top of society and barely 120 years old at the bottom. This page follows them from the royal houses of the Three Kingdoms, through the Chinese-character surnames adopted under Silla and Goryeo, the genealogy culture of Joseon, the forced registration of 1909 and the forced renaming of 1940, to the census of 2015.

Before surnames: the Three Kingdoms (to 668)

The earliest Korean names in Chinese records are single personal names — Jumong, Onjo, Hyeokgeose. Surnames appear first for royalty: the Go of Goguryeo (from Jumong, later “Go Jumong”), the Buyeo of Baekje, and in Silla the three rotating royal clans of Park, Seok and Kim. Each is attached to a founding legend — Park from a gourd-egg, Seok from a chest on the sea, Kim from a golden box — that historians read as clan totems given a name only later. Baekje’s aristocracy had eight great surnames (Sa, Yeon, Hyeop, Hae, Jin, Guk, Mok, Baek), several now extinct. Below the aristocracy, no one had a surname.

Silla and the adoption of Chinese surnames (668–935)

Unified Silla modelled its state on Tang China, and its elite adopted Chinese-style single-character surnames to match. The six village chiefs of Gyeongju were retrospectively credited with the surnames Lee, Choi, Jung, Son, Bae and Seol; envoys and scholars who studied in China came back with Chinese surnames, and Chinese immigrants brought their own. By the ninth century the scholar Choi Chi-won could sign a Chinese-style name that a Tang official would recognise. Silla’s “bone rank” caste system meant surnames still marked only the top few percent.

Goryeo: surnames and clan seats spread (918–1392)

Goryeo’s founder Wang Geon rewarded the regional strongmen (hojok) who supported his unification with surnames and, crucially, with bon-gwan — the clan-seat system that still organises Korean families. This is the founding moment recorded in most large clans’ genealogies: the Andong Kwon, Andong Kim and Andong Jang all trace themselves to three local leaders at the 930 battle of Andong. Goryeo also opened the civil service examination (958) to those with surnames, giving the provincial gentry a reason to acquire one. By the late Goryeo period most free landowners had a surname and bon-gwan; slaves and many peasants still did not.

Joseon: the age of the genealogy (1392–1897)

Joseon was a Confucian state, and Confucian ritual required knowing your ancestors. The jokpo genealogy book, first printed by the Andong Kwon in 1476, became the proof of yangban status — and yangban status carried exemption from military service and most taxes. The result was a slow, enormous fraud. Families bought entries in existing genealogies, forged their own, or simply adopted the surname of the local yangban clan and waited a generation for anyone to forget. Household registers from Daegu show the yangban share of the population rising from about 9% in 1690 to 70% in 1858, almost entirely by absorption of commoners into existing surnames. This is why Kim, Lee and Park grew so much larger than any surname created after Goryeo: the new members joined the biggest existing names.

1894–1909: everyone gets a surname

The Gabo Reform of 1894 abolished slavery and the hereditary class system, removing the last legal bar to a surname. The Minjeokbeop (민적법) civil registration law of 1909, enacted under the Japanese protectorate, then required every household to register a surname and given name. Officials, often local yangban, assigned names to families that had none, and the families chose — or were given — the name of the landlord, the village’s dominant clan, or simply the commonest name in the county. Within a few years the surname-less population, estimated at 10–20% in 1900, had disappeared into the existing surnames.

1940: the Japanese name-change order

In February 1940 the colonial government’s soshi-kaimei policy pressed Koreans to adopt Japanese-style family names (Kim became Kaneda 金田 or Kanemura 金村, Lee became Rinoie 李家, and so on). About 80% of households had registered a Japanese name by the August deadline, under pressure that ranged from denial of ration cards to school admission. The names were never fully adopted in daily life and were abolished by the Name Restoration Order of October 1946, which returned all family registers to the original Korean surnames. A trace survives in the handful of Japanese-origin surnames in the census — Hwangmok, Mubon, Deungjeong — belonging to families of mixed marriage who kept the Japanese name in Korean pronunciation.

Since 1945: a frozen list

The Republic of Korea’s 1958 Civil Code kept the father-line surname, the bon-gwan and the same-clan marriage ban intact. The 1985 census counted 275 surnames; the 2000 census counted 286 surnames and 4,179 bon-gwan; the 2015 census counted 191 Korean surnames (by Hangul) with five or more holders alongside thousands of foreign surnames held by naturalised citizens. The 1997 Constitutional Court ruling ended the same-clan marriage ban, and the 2005–2008 family-law reform allowed children to take the mother’s surname — the first change to surname inheritance in Korean history.

North Korea

North Korea has the same surnames but different spellings: the 1966 orthography restored the initial ㄹ that the South drops, so 이 Lee is 리 Ri, 임 Lim is 림 Rim, 류 Ryu keeps its R. North Korea abolished the bon-gwan system and jokpo culture as feudal in the 1950s, so most North Koreans under 60 do not know their clan seat — a striking difference from the South, where almost everyone does.

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