How to Tell if a Korean Name is Male or Female

One of the common problems Korean language learners face is – how to determine the gender of a Korean name. How to tell if a person is male or female if you just have the name of the person.

There are no scientific rules to determine the male and female names in Korean but definitely there are certain rules of thumb or hints that can help you know the gender.

Most Korean names consist of Hanja characters. Korean government has a list of approx 2800 Hanja characters that can be used legally for names.

Generally there the Hanja characters used in a male name show masculinity, strength and power while the characters in female name show beauty, kindness, virtue etc. For example the character 용 (yong – dragon) or 철 (Cheol – iron) are used in male names while characters like 미 (mi – beauty) and 지 (ji – wisdom) are commonly used in female names.

Recently there has been a trend to have pure Korean names instead of using hanja. So it’s very common to come across names like  하늘 (Haneul – Heaven or Sky), 아름 (Areum – Beauty), 이슬 (Iseul – Dew) and  슬기 (Seulgi – Wisdom). Sometimes names have a mix of a hanja character and a pure Korean word.

So if you know the some commonly used Hanja characters in Korean male and female names, you can guess the gender of a name pretty accurately.

In this post we are giving a list of 50 most common Hanja characters that appear in male and female names.

The first column shows the original Hanja character, the second column its meaning. You have to look at the third column as it shows the characters or sounds that you will see in Korean names.

Note that there are some names that are commonly used for both men and women..

Below I have also given a list 10 most common male and female names in Korea.

Most Common Characters in Korean Male Names

Source: erumi.com

Most Common Characters in Korean Female Names

Source: erumi.com

10 Most Common Korean Female Names

(Source – Wikipedia)

10 Most Common Korean Male Names

(Source – Wikipedia)

Top 20 Most Family Names (Surnames) in South Korea

1. 김 (金; Kim, Gim)
2. 이 (李; Lee, Yi, I, Yee)
3. 박 (朴; Park, Pak, Bak)
4. 최 (崔; Choi, Choe)
5. 정 (鄭; Jeong, Chung)
6. 강 (姜; Kang, Gang)
7. 조 (曹; Cho, Jo, Joe)
8. 윤 (尹; Yoon, Youn, Yun)
9. 장 (張; Jang, Chang)
10. 신 (申; Shin, Sin)

11. 한 (韓; Han, Hahn)
12. 서 (徐; Seo,Suh)
13. 권 (權; Kwon)
14. 손 (孫; Son, Sohn)
15. 황 (黃; Hwang, Whang)
16. 송 (宋; Song,Soung)
17. 안 (安; Ahn, An)
18. 임 (林; Lim, Rim, Im)
19. 유 (柳; Yoo, Yu)
20. 홍 (洪; Hong)