Today I'd like to post about the shapes of Korean names. Very basic things for me and all Koreans but I am sure it will be interesting to you, who visited here!
Do you know any Korean? Probably PSY will be the best known Korean these days. However, that "PSY" word is definitely not a Korean name. So I would give another world-famous example. Rising star, the man of 2012, Pyongyang style Kim Jong Un(김정은)~!!
First let's check which part is the family name and the given name.
Can you guess what Kim Jong Un's family name is? Usually globally, given name first, family name last so Un is his family name right? Definitely not. If you remember his father's name(also world-famous or infamous) Kim Jong Il, then you will notice that "Un" is the only part changed from his father's name.
Then the answer came out! "Kim Jong" has not been changed so its their family name! No, went too far. Almost every(not all but 99%) Korean family name is consist of one Korean character(which usually is one English syllable). So in this case, Kim(김) is their family name.
Also almost every Korean given name(again, 99%) is consist of two Korean characters, 2 syllables. So "Jong Un" is his given name. We use family name first and given name last every time in Korea. Never use given name first.
But outside Korea, we usually follow westerner's rule, first name first. If you ever heard "Yu Na Kim"(figure skater) or Ji Sung Park(football player), or watched any sports game versus Korean team, they are probably using family name + given name style. Kim Jong Un is very rare case. His whole name has already been used as one specific word following his father's name.
There are one more thing happening by the translation from Korean to English. Koreans do not give spacing between characters of names(for example, "Lee Dong Hae" is written as 이동해, no spacing between first and last name). When somebody converting his/her name, for example 이동해 to English, he should choose which spacing type he will use.
At first, many Koreans used their given name without spacing, like "Donghae". However it confused people who do not know Korean naming. Probably he meant it to be read as "Dong Hae" but someone could think it as "Don Ghae". Someone possibly give a call to speak to Mr. Don Ghae.
So recently many Korean uses hyphen(-) between the 2 given name characters like this: Dong-hae. There is another type I used in this article, giving spacing between every single character of given name. However, as you have seen from the case of Kim Jung Un, it could result more confusing. Someone might find Mr. Un on phone.
I prefer and would suggest inserting hyphen between characters of given name. In this way, people can tell each Korean characters and are not confused as middle name.
