To prevent confusion, these "last names" will be identified as "sung" (성) - the Korean word for the familial name. There are about 250 "sungs" in Korea. This is probably the least amount in the world, but it does not indicate a lack of genetic diversity. Jang is common. For each "sung," there are a variant of clans, that indicate your ancestral origin. This week on KWOW, we learn the structure of Korean names and show you how to choose your own name. But Yoo is a relatively rare surname in Korea. This Sino Korean word that was later adopted as a last name refers ‘to govern’ or ‘to oversee’. Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, Brown... Are you one of the millions of Americans sporting one of these top 100 common last names from the 2000 and 2010 censuses? The following list of the most commonly occurring surnames in America includes details on each name's origin and meaning. There are 46 hanja with the reading ji and 42 hanja with the reading woo on the South Korean government’s official list of hanja which may be used in given names. 1. In this respect, 130-plus Korean last names were adopted from China, the role model of Choson, while last names of other foreign origins are short of 10. On this site. Often, Korean names are made up of two Sino-Korean morphemes, like Chinese names, except in Korean, the first "word" is the surname, while the second is the individual name. A Korean name commonly has three syllables and does not have any space in between them: 이효리 강대성 윤미래 However when the names are Romanized, there is a space placed after the first syllable: 이효리 & Top 10 Korean Family Names in South Korea According to South Korea’s National Statistical Office, these are the most popular Korean surnames in the Republic of Korea. List of Korean names and meanings. Kim goes on to explain the absence of Korean surnames derived from professions, a practice common in … Well, unique Korean girl names often come with subtle nuances in their meanings. Korean surnames are usually based on a single Hanja character, though there are some very rare two-character surnames. What does it mean? Since there are relatively few Korean surnames, it is easy to find pretty much most of them that exist and list them on one page. Liu is Yoo and Zhang is Jang. Why Korean? Liu (劉), Zhang (張 ) are Koreans surnames. I made the following post earlier: Why are most Koreans named "Kim"? Numbers are taken from the 2015 South Korean census. The meanings of such syllables may vary when Romanized from Hanja (the Korean name for … Since the majority of Koreans have the same 10-20 surnames, these names will be arranged by popularity in South Korea rather than alphabetically. 2. Home » Glossary: This means all the children of the same generation in a family have one part of their given name in common, like Kim Hak-kun and Kim Hak-ju. Most Korean names consist of two or three syllables. The four most common surnames (Kim, Lee, Park and Choi) account for about half the population.