Hangul letter names

The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul internationally, Hangeul in South Korea, and Choson'gŭl in North Korea, has had different names applied to its letters throughout its history and even currently.

Since the 1527 work Hunmong chahoe, vowels have been consistently named after the sound they produce if attached to an ㅇ.^[1][2][3]

Consonants have individual names, although these have varied across time and now between North and South Korea.^[5]

Names were not recorded for any of the letters when they were first promulgated in 1446.^[5]

A prominent hypothesis^[a] is that the consonants were possibly commonly referred to in the 15th and early 16th centuries by a single syllable containing the corresponding consonant and ㅣ, e.g. gi (기), ni (니), di (디), etc. The hypothesis's reasoning is that, in the Hunminjeongeum Eonhae, the particle ᄂᆞᆫ is used after each consonant. That particle is only used if the previous syllable is pronounced with a final vowel sound; otherwise it'd be ᄋᆞᆫ. Also, that particle is only used after positive vowels (ㅏ, ㆍ, ㅗ) or the neutral vowel ㅣ. ㆍ was most commonly used among the positive vowels to illustrate sounds, making ㆍ or ㅣ seem the most likely candidates. Scholars then rely on various context clues to support the use of the latter over the former, including reasoning on the 1527 text Hunmong chahoe. That text was designed to reflect common practices around Hangul and calls for ㅣ names for syllables not used as finals.^[7][8]

Names for the base consonants were first attested to in the Hunmong chahoe,^[9][10][5] although it is unclear if Ch'oe coined the names himself.^[b] These names have formed the basis of the modern letter names.^[11] Many consonant names tend to follow a pattern where the first syllable has the consonant and ㅣ and the second 으 with the consonant on bottom, for example ㅁ is named mieum (미음). This was done to illustrate the sound of the consonant in both the initial and final position. However, because the names were recorded in an approximate phonetic fashion using Hanja, some of the names broke that pattern when converted back to Korean. For example ㄱ should be gieuk (기윽) by that pattern, but the Hanja given for it (其役) yields giyeok (기역) when converted back. Consonants that were then only used as initials and not finals had names following a different pattern: they were a single syllable containing the consonant and ㅣ. For example, the name of ㅋ was ki (키).^[1][12][13] The 1569 Buddhist text Chinŏnjip (진언집; 眞言集) used the same names.^[14]

In the 1909 report Kungmun yŏn'gu ŭijŏngan (국문연구의정안; 國文硏究議定安) by the government-sponsored Hangul research organization National Language Research Institute, the names of all basic consonants were given in the ㅣ으 pattern, including the formerly irregular names (e.g. giyeok → gieuk) and the names of non-final consonants (e.g. ki → kieuk).^[15]

The 1933 Unified Hangul Orthography (UHO) preserved several historical spellings of names, like giyeok, but adopted the ㅣ으 pattern for the non-final consonants that had ㅣ names in the Hunmong chahoe. It was decided to do this as those letters had become used as finals by this point. South Korea still maintains the names chosen by the UHO. It was felt that some of these names had a long tradition, and keeping them would be minimally disruptive.^{[13][16][17][18]} North Korea adopted the apparent intended names of the consonants that broke the ㅣ으 pattern and uses toen (된; lit. 'hard', referring to the harder pronunciation) instead of ssang (쌍; 雙; lit. 'double', referring to letter shapes) for the duplicated consonants (e.g. 된기윽; toen'giŭk).^[19][6][20] The main reason for this was that ssang is a Sino-Korean word, which North Korea sometimes discourages in favor of native Korean vocabulary.^[19][6]

The Gyeoremal-keunsajeon is a joint North–South Korea dictionary project compiled by a joint commission from both sides. Its compilation began in 2004.^[21] The joint commission agreed to adopt the regularized spellings of the base consonant names used by North Korea (i.e. 기윽, 디읃, 시읏), but adopt the South Korean practice of using ssang on the doubled consonants. South Korean linguist Hong Yun-pyo argues that this practice is likely to stay limited to use in this dictionary.^[22]

Many archaic letters did not have official names; even into the modern period, scholars described them using a variety of names. In 1992, the National Institute of Korean Language (NIKL) met and decided which official names to give the archaic letters; these names were to be applied to Unicode.^[23][24] These names were then romanized using the ISO/TR 11941 romanization system (but without apostrophes).^[25]

• Kim-Renaud, Young-Key, ed. (1997). The Korean Alphabet: Its History and Structure. University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1989-7.
  • Sohn, Ho-min. "Orthographic Divergence in South and North Korea Toward a Unified Spelling System". In Kim-Renaud (1997).
• Lee, Ki-Moon; Ramsey, S. Robert (2011). A History of the Korean Language. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780511974045.
• Taylor, Insup; Taylor, M. Martin (2014) [1995]. Verhoeven, Ludo; van den Broek, Paul W. (eds.). Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Studies in Written Language and Literacy. Vol. 14 (Revised ed.). John Benjamins Publishing Company. doi:10.1075/swll.14. ISBN 9789027269447.

• 한글 마춤법 통일안 [Unified Hangul Orthography] (PDF) (Report) (in Korean). Korean Language Society. 1933 – via Wikisource.
• 안경상 (2020). 어학고전 《훈몽자회》의 몇가지 특징 [Some Features of "Hunmong Jahoe"]. Korean Language in China (in Korean). 225: 38–51 – via DBpia.
• 이관규 (2024). 한글 자음자의 명칭에 대한 고찰 [A Study on the Names of Korean Consonants]. 문법 교육 (in Korean). 51. 한국문법교육학회: 41–71. doi:10.21850/kge.2024.51..41 – via Korea Citation Index.
• 최호철 (1988). 북한의 맞춤법 [North Korea's orthography]. 국어생활 (in Korean). 13: 33–48 – via National Institute of Korean Language.
• 홍윤표 (2016). 한글 자모의 명칭과 배열순서에 대한 역사적 연구 [A Historical Study of the Names and Alphabetical Orders of Hangul Letters]. 한국어사 연구 (in Korean). 2. 국어사연구회: 259–321. ISSN 2383-4978 – via DBpia.
• 홍윤표 (2019-12-13). 한글 [Hangul] (in Korean) (Ebook ed.). 세창출판사. ISBN 978-89-8411-924-6.