How it works

• Real names only. Given names come from the Supreme Court of Korea’s statistics of the top names registered at birth (Electronic Family Relationship Registration System, Korean), 2008–2025, nationwide and by city or county, separately for boys and girls. A name counts as a girl’s or boy’s name when at least 80% of those births were girls or boys; otherwise it is shown as used for both.
• Sound match. Your name is first written in Hangul with the rules below. Then we compare it with every Korean name sound by sound — first consonant, vowel and final consonant — reading names the way they are pronounced (민아 sounds like 미나). Similar sounds cost little: ㄷ/ㅌ/ㄸ, ㅓ/ㅗ, ㅐ/ㅔ, a final consonant or not. The first syllable matters most, and popular names get a small bonus when we pick the candidates. The % shown is the sound match alone, and the names are listed from the highest %.
• Surname. The closest in sound among Korea’s 50 most common surnames in the 2015 census (table on Wikipedia). If you give no surname, we use Kim, Lee or Park — always the same one for the same name. The Latin spelling shown for the surname is its usual spelling (Kim, Lee, Park); the given name uses the Revised Romanization.
• Hanja. For each syllable we show up to two characters that are both on the Supreme Court’s list of characters allowed in names (search, Korean) and in the Unicode Unihan database, preferring the 1,800 basic characters taught in Korean schools. Meanings are the short English definitions from Unihan. Korean parents choose hanja for meaning, so these are only ideas — some names, like 하늘 or 윤슬, are native Korean words with no hanja.

• Sounds like mine — the sound match described above.
• Popular — the top names registered at birth in the year you choose (2008–2025; other years use the nearest one, and no year means 2008–2025 combined), for the chosen gender. Your name only decides which of the top 10 is shown first, so the same name always gets the same result. The rank and number of babies shown are the official figures.
• Classic — the ten most popular boys’ and girls’ names of babies born in 1948, 1958, 1968, 1978, 1988, 1998 and 2008, announced by the Supreme Court of Korea in January 2009 (Financial News report, Korean). We use these lists to stand for each decade and show the one closest in sound to your name. A later announcement in May 2016 counted whole decades and names different leaders for some of them — for example, 미숙 for 1960s girls instead of 미경 in 1968 (Yonhap report, Korean).
• Meaning — The meaning list starts with My name’s meaning (the default): we look up what your name means and say it in Korean. Meanings come only from Wiktionary (the English edition, through kaikki.org; CC BY-SA 4.0): for English, Spanish, Arabic and Thai names, the meaning quoted in the name’s etymology (Sophia ← Greek σοφία “wisdom”) — explanations marked “possibly”, “perhaps” and the like are left out; an Arabic or Thai name can also take the meaning of the ordinary word spelled the same way (أمل “hope”). A Japanese name in kana counts only when it is listed as a given name with kanji that are also an everyday word read the same way (さくら = 桜 “cherry blossom”, そら = 空 “sky”). Chinese characters show each character’s English definition from Unihan. We turn the English meaning into Korean with Wiktionary’s Korean entries and translation tables, preferring a real Korean given name, then native Korean words (하늘, 빛), then Sino-Korean ones (희망). You see the literal translation with a surname (김벚꽃 — fun, but not a usual name; words of three syllables or more are shown last), a real Korean name with that meaning when there is one (하늘, 지혜), and names whose hanja carry the meaning. Meanings are shown in English as written in Wiktionary. If no meaning is documented, we say so. If you choose a meaning from the list instead: each meaning is a set of name hanja picked by rule: the character’s Korean gloss in the Supreme Court list or its English Unihan definition must contain a word for that meaning (for example 밝을 or “bright”). We then look for real Korean names whose syllables can be written with such characters, both syllables first, then by sound. The result is a hanja combination you could use, not the hanja of any particular person.

All spellings follow the Loanword Orthography (외래어 표기법), the official standard of the National Institute of Korean Language (국립국어원) for writing foreign words and names in Hangul. Read the full rules (Korean).

• Only the 24 basic Korean letters are used.
• Only ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅇ are used as final consonants.
• As a rule, tense consonants (ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ) are not used for plosives — Thai is one of the exceptions.
• Spellings that are already well established are respected.

English

Written from pronunciation using the IPA table (Table 1) and the English section of Chapter 3. Examples from the rules: cat [kæt] → 캣, make [meik] → 메이크. Because English spelling does not fix the pronunciation, results that are not in the official examples are marked By the rules or Best guess.

Japanese

Written from kana using Table 4 and Chapter 3, Section 6. The small っ becomes the final ㅅ (サッポロ → 삿포로) and long vowels are not written (トウキョウ → 도쿄). Names in kanji have several possible readings, so type them in hiragana or katakana.

Chinese

Modern Chinese names are written by their Mandarin pronunciation (Table 5, Chapter 3 Section 7); tones are not shown. For people of the past the rules use the Korean reading of the characters (Chapter 4, Section 2). We show the Korean reading of your characters as a reference, marked as an alternative.

Spanish

Written with Table 2 and Chapter 3, Section 4. For example, c and g before e and i become ㅅ and ㅎ: Cecilia → 세실리아.

Thai

Written with Table 15 and Chapter 3, Section 17. Thai keeps tense consonants: Krung Thep → 끄룽텝.

Arabic

The Loanword Orthography has no table for Arabic. When a name appears in the Institute’s published usage examples (외래어 표기 용례) we use that spelling and mark it Official spelling; other Arabic names are estimates and are marked Best guess.

Official spelling — the same as a spelling published by the Institute. By the rules — converted with the official rules. Best guess — no official rule or the pronunciation is unclear.

The line under the Hangul is the Hangul written back in Latin letters using the Revised Romanization of Korean (국어의 로마자 표기법). Following its rule for personal names, sound changes between syllables are not shown. Read the romanization rules (Korean).