Namgung 남궁 — Korean last name
Is Namgung a Korean last name?
Yes. Namgung (Hangul: 남궁, Hanja: 南宮) is a Korean family name recorded in the 2015 South Korean census with 21,313 holders, making it the #78 most common of the 191 surnames counted. Roughly one in every 2,332 South Koreans is a Namgung. It is uncommon enough that many Koreans will know only a few people who carry it.
How to write Namgung in Korean
In Hangul, Namgung is written 남궁. Its Hanja (Chinese character) is 南宮. Unlike many Korean surnames, Namgung has a single Hanja form, so every Namgung in Korea shares the same character.
What does Namgung mean?
The character 南宮 means south palace. 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 Namgung clans (bon-gwan)
Korean surnames are subdivided by bon-gwan — the ancestral hometown of the clan founder. Two people named Namgung from different bon-gwan are considered unrelated. The best-known Namgung clans are: Hamyeol Namgung. The place name comes first (for example "Gimhae Kim" means the Kim clan whose founder settled in Gimhae).
How common is Namgung?
Namgung is uncommon Korean surname. Just above it in the rankings is Mo (21,912) and just below it is Tak (21,099). 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
Namgung 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 Namgung, and the older McCune–Reischauer system gives Namgung. Other spellings you will see in real life include Namkung, Namkoong, Namgoong, Namgoung, Namkoung. 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 남궁.
How to pronounce Namgung
Namgung (남궁) is pronounced roughly as the Revised Romanization "Namgung" 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 Namgung 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: 南宮 is Nángōng in Mandarin and Nam Cung in Vietnamese. A Korean Namgung 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 "Namgung" 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 Namgung
Is Namgung a Korean or Chinese last name?
Namgung as spelled is Korean (남궁). The Hanja 南宮 is also used as a surname in China and Vietnam, but with different romanizations (Nángōng in Mandarin, Nam Cung in Vietnamese). The families are not related.
How many people have the last name Namgung?
21,313 people in South Korea had the surname Namgung (남궁) in the 2015 census, or 0.04% of the population. That makes it the #78 most common Korean surname.
How do you write Namgung in Korean?
Namgung is written 남궁 in Hangul. In Hanja it is 南宮.
What does the Korean last name Namgung mean?
The Hanja 南宮 means "south palace". 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.