Jin 진 — Korean last name
Is Jin a Korean last name?
Yes. Jin (Hangul: 진, Hanja: 陳) is a Korean family name recorded in the 2015 South Korean census with 186,310 holders, making it the #39 most common of the 191 surnames counted. Roughly one in every 267 South Koreans is a Jin. It is a well-established name you will meet regularly in Korea and in Korean communities abroad.
How to write Jin in Korean
In Hangul, Jin is written 진. The same Hangul syllable is used by 7 different Hanja (Chinese characters): 陳, 秦, 晋, 陣, 眞, 進, 珍. Each character is technically a separate surname with its own clans and ancestry, even though they sound identical and are romanized the same way. The most common by far is 陳.
What does Jin mean?
The character 陳 means to display, to arrange; old; the Chen state. 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 Jin clans (bon-gwan)
Korean surnames are subdivided by bon-gwan — the ancestral hometown of the clan founder. Two people named Jin from different bon-gwan are considered unrelated. The best-known Jin clans are: Yeoyang Jin, Samcheok Jin. The place name comes first (for example "Gimhae Kim" means the Kim clan whose founder settled in Gimhae).
How common is Jin?
Jin is common Korean surname. Just above it in the rankings is Cha (194,788) and just below it is Min (171,799). 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
Jin 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 Jin, and the older McCune–Reischauer system gives Chin. Other spellings you will see in real life include Jhin, Jean, Gin, Chen, Jeen. 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 진.
How to pronounce Jin
Jin is pronounced "jeen" (진).
Is Jin 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: 陳 is Chén in Mandarin and Trần in Vietnamese. A Korean Jin 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 "Jin" 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 Jin
Is Jin a Korean or Chinese last name?
Jin as spelled is Korean (진). The Hanja 陳 is also used as a surname in China and Vietnam, but with different romanizations (Chén in Mandarin, Trần in Vietnamese). The families are not related.
How many people have the last name Jin?
186,310 people in South Korea had the surname Jin (진) in the 2015 census, or 0.37% of the population. That makes it the #39 most common Korean surname.
How do you write Jin in Korean?
Jin is written 진 in Hangul. In Hanja it is 陳 or 秦 or 晋 or 陣 or 眞 or 進 or 珍, which are separate lineages sharing one pronunciation.
What does the Korean last name Jin mean?
The Hanja 陳 means "to display, to arrange; old; the Chen state". 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.