Korean has a lot of family names that are also easy to remember vocabulary words. This is pretty common for many other last names as well. If you don’t know it, Koreans basically have 3 syllables in their name with the family name appearing first (rarely you may meet someone with 4 syllables…I’ve met one in my entire time in Korea).
This can make them easier to remember than Western names (once you get more familiar with Hnagul).
In this graphic, we’ve told you the basic Korean meanings, but most names also have another meaning which link to the hanja version of the name.
There are many Korean last names with the most common being Kim (김), Park (박), and Lee (이) .
Here are nine of some of the most common ones you will come across.
If you want to study even more and improve your Korean, check out our ebooks over at the Dom & Hyo Store.
List of Korean family words in this graphic:
초 (cho) = Seconds
배 (bae) = Pear
백 (baek) = 100
감 (gam) = Persimmon
금 (geum) = Gold
김 (gim) = Laver
문 (mun) = Door
서 (seo) = West
차 (cha) = Tea