usually chinese and koreans have three characters in their names
first character is family name mostly
but it's not the whole story
there also are many people have only one character as their given names
Kang Min is an example
Kang means the river and Min means people
it's a very common phenominon
such as my name is Lee Min
the same pronunciation with terran killer but the different characters different meaning;)

PaleMan

Russian Federation1953 Posts

July 08 2003 06:51 GMT

#10

How abot Kim Jung Min, Lim Yo Hwan, Kim Dong Soo etc?

Emlary

China3334 Posts

July 08 2003 06:59 GMT

#11

kim means gold jung means honest and here min means smart
lim means forest yo means far away hwan means shining

one thing u westerner should know is that these names are just the pronunciation from korean not the original characters
in other words "Min" represent various characters in our language

GundamVX

United States1025 Posts

July 08 2003 07:06 GMT

#12

If you translate the Chinese characters used to spell out
the names it sounds like they have great meanings...
when in fact most Koreans don't even bother to find out what
their name means or ask other people about their names.

Waxangel

United States33422 Posts

July 08 2003 07:11 GMT

#13

Em, I think you're wrong

Unless you searched Korean sites and found the exact chinese characters for their names :O

Korean names are not last - first - middle name. It's just the surname + first name. The first name can be of any length, but it's usually just 2 letters, but sometimes it's 1 letter, and again sometimes even longer.

Anal_Ripper

Russian Federation1233 Posts

July 08 2003 07:14 GMT

#14

On July 08 2003 14:59 Twisted wrote:

Show nested quote +

Hmm why didn't I laugh then oo;

absense of sense of humour may have something to do with it

Emlary

China3334 Posts

July 08 2003 07:14 GMT

#15

and i think u'd better edit ur top post the last sentense
all chinese and koreans have no middle name
just family and given name
one or two characters in given
:O

btw i would like to call their ID
they are cool

Fedaykin

Netherlands2003 Posts

July 08 2003 07:29 GMT

#16

So, if I understand correctly, the given name is one character, e.i.
Kang in Nal_rA's case and Hong in Yellow's case. Hope I'm still correct.

And the 'Double' name, which Nal_rA doesn't have but is Jin-Ho for yellow and Yo-Hwan for boxer, etc. is the family name. Then which part do they 'transfer' to their children...

And now I'm suddenly confused about Jang Jin-Nam and Jang Jin-Su, I don't think they both have the same first names, and in that case Jang would be family's name...

So, if I'd walk up to any korean of whom I know his/her name, or better, any of the 5 mentioned above, how would i address them.

Please enlighten me on the korean-names-case

BigBalls

United States5354 Posts

July 08 2003 07:40 GMT

#17

boxer is lim yo-hwan goes by lim, i would guess that is first name

Emlary

China3334 Posts

July 08 2003 07:46 GMT

#18

u got the reverse side....
and i forget to say that children in one family often share family name and one certain character to show they'er BROTHERs or SISTERs
and another two or three differnt characters to show they are not the same one

Jang Jin-Nam and Jang Jin-Su
jang is their family name
jin is their sharing name
we can distinguish them by Nam and Su
jinnam and jinsu both are their surname (given name)

mensrea

Canada5062 Posts

July 08 2003 09:54 GMT

#19

...and on a final (and confusing) note:

Korean name = surname + given name. This is true. And, as already explained by Emlary and Wax, the given name part may be either one or two syllable-characters (In fact, there's nothing legally wrong with having a given name with 10 or even 20 characters in it - but that's like 0.001% of the population in Korea)

BUT, it should also be mentioned that there are legally recognized surnames used in Korea which have MORE THAN just a single syllable-character. There are several, but the most common example of this would be the family name "Sun-Woo" (��). So, for example, if Boxer somehow got caught up in a freak temporal time-distortion a la Next Generation and found himself suddenly re-born to parents with the surname Sun-Woo, his new, full name would be "Sun-Woo Yo-hwan" (��ȯ). Fyi, for the trivia buffs out there, the Sun-Woo surname originated in China and is not considered, in the strict historical sense, a Korean surname, tho obviously the surname is now officially recognized in Korea as a proper Korean surname because it's been used Korea so long.

There are other examples, but my brain's too fried right now to think of them.

Anyway, despite what I've just told you, 99% of all Koreans will have a single-character surname followed by a 2-syllable given name. So, most you can rest easy in the knowledge that you'll recognize a Korean name when you see one - just don't rule out surprises every now and then.