Kim 김 — Korean last name
Is Kim a Korean last name?
Yes. Kim (Hangul: 김, Hanja: 金) is a Korean family name recorded in the 2015 South Korean census with 10,689,967 holders, making it the #1 most common of the 191 surnames counted. Roughly one in every 5 South Koreans is a Kim. It belongs to the ten surnames that together cover more than 60% of the country.
How to write Kim in Korean
In Hangul, Kim is written 김. Its Hanja (Chinese character) is 金. Unlike many Korean surnames, Kim has a single Hanja form, so every Kim in Korea shares the same character.
What does Kim mean?
The character 金 means gold, metal. 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 Kim clans (bon-gwan)
Korean surnames are subdivided by bon-gwan — the ancestral hometown of the clan founder. Two people named Kim from different bon-gwan are considered unrelated. The best-known Kim clans are: Gimhae Kim, Gyeongju Kim, Gwangsan Kim, Andong Kim. The place name comes first (for example "Gimhae Kim" means the Kim clan whose founder settled in Gimhae).
How common is Kim?
Kim is a top-10 Korean surname. Lee (7,307,237). 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
Kim 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 Gim, and the older McCune–Reischauer system gives Kim. Other spellings you will see in real life include Ghim, Kin. 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 김.
How to pronounce Kim
Kim is pronounced exactly as it looks: "kim" with a short i.
Is Kim 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: 金 is Jīn in Mandarin and Kim in Vietnamese. A Korean Kim 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 "Kim" 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 Kim
Is Kim a Korean or Chinese last name?
Kim as spelled is Korean (김). The Hanja 金 is also used as a surname in China and Vietnam, but with different romanizations (Jīn in Mandarin, Kim in Vietnamese). The families are not related.
How many people have the last name Kim?
10,689,967 people in South Korea had the surname Kim (김) in the 2015 census, or 21.5% of the population. That makes it the #1 most common Korean surname.
How do you write Kim in Korean?
Kim is written 김 in Hangul. In Hanja it is 金.
What does the Korean last name Kim mean?
The Hanja 金 means "gold, metal". 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.