Gil 길 — Korean last name
Is Gil a Korean last name?
Yes. Gil (Hangul: 길, Hanja: 吉) is a Korean family name recorded in the 2015 South Korean census with 38,173 holders, making it the #62 most common of the 191 surnames counted. Roughly one in every 1,302 South Koreans is a Gil. It is uncommon enough that many Koreans will know only a few people who carry it.
How to write Gil in Korean
In Hangul, Gil is written 길. Its Hanja (Chinese character) is 吉. Unlike many Korean surnames, Gil has a single Hanja form, so every Gil in Korea shares the same character.
What does Gil mean?
The character 吉 means lucky, auspicious, good fortune. 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.
Major Gil clans (bon-gwan)
Korean surnames are subdivided by bon-gwan — the ancestral hometown of the clan founder. Two people named Gil from different bon-gwan are considered unrelated. The best-known Gil clans are: Haepyeong Gil. The place name comes first (for example "Gimhae Kim" means the Kim clan whose founder settled in Gimhae).
How common is Gil?
Gil is uncommon Korean surname. Just above it in the rankings is Ma (39,196) and just below it is Yeon (34,850). 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
Gil 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 Gil, and the older McCune–Reischauer system gives Kil. Other spellings you will see in real life include Gill, Gihl, Khil, Keel, Kill. 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 길.
How to pronounce Gil
Gil (길) is pronounced roughly as the Revised Romanization "Gil" 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 Gil 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: 吉 is Jí in Mandarin and Cát in Vietnamese. A Korean Gil 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 "Gil" 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 Gil
Is Gil a Korean or Chinese last name?
Gil as spelled is Korean (길). The Hanja 吉 is also used as a surname in China and Vietnam, but with different romanizations (Jí in Mandarin, Cát in Vietnamese). The families are not related.
How many people have the last name Gil?
38,173 people in South Korea had the surname Gil (길) in the 2015 census, or 0.08% of the population. That makes it the #62 most common Korean surname.
How do you write Gil in Korean?
Gil is written 길 in Hangul. In Hanja it is 吉.
What does the Korean last name Gil mean?
The Hanja 吉 means "lucky, auspicious, good fortune". Korean surname meanings come from the Chinese character the name is written with, not from the Korean sound.
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.