Korean Name Generator

Korean names put the family name first and the given name second, so in Kim Seo-yeon the family is Kim and the person is called Seo-yeon. Only about 250 surnames are in use, and five of them (Kim, Lee, Park, Choi and Jung) cover roughly half of South Korea, which is why two Kims in the same office are rarely related. Rarer two-syllable surnames such as Namgung, Hwangbo and Sunwoo exist but stand out immediately.

Most given names are two syllables, each drawn from a Chinese-derived character (hanja) with its own meaning: Seo (auspicious) plus Yeon (beautiful), or Min (clever) plus Jun (talented). Since the 1980s parents have also chosen pure Korean words with no hanja at all, such as Ha-neul (sky), Seul-gi (wisdom), Bo-ram (worthwhile) and Saet-byeol (new star), and a few go further with single-syllable names like Sol (pine) or Byeol (star). Older generations tend toward names ending in -sook, -ja, -hee, -chul and -ho, so a grandmother called Young-sook and a granddaughter called Ji-woo sound right for their age.

Romanization varies from family to family: the same name can be written Seo-yeon, Seoyeon or Seo Yeon, and Lee is also spelled Yi or Rhee. This generator uses the hyphenated style most common in passports and English-language media, and you can adjust to taste.