Get your
Korean name.

It picks from a table — it does not transliterate

There are three ways a tool like this could turn your name into a Korean one: write the sound of it in Hangul, find characters that match its meaning, or choose from a list prepared in advance. This page does the third, with the second laid on top when the meaning of what you type can be found in its tables. Nothing here sounds a name out — the "Write your own name in Hangul" link under the result goes to a different page, and that one does.

The lists are short and fixed: 20 surnames, and 24 syllables that given names are built from. A given name is always two of those 24, and never the same one twice. So what comes back is one of the combinations we prepared beforehand, not a character invented on the spot.

The surname is drawn off the table mechanically and has nothing to do with the meaning of what you typed. If Kim or Lee or Park comes up, there is nothing in that to read.

What happens when the meaning of your name can be found

There are two tables of what names are usually taken to mean: 106 Japanese given names and 139 from other languages. Of those 139, 2 repeat a Japanese entry and are never reached, because the Japanese table is read first — so 243 distinct names can actually be looked up. The Japanese entries can be reached in kana as well as in romaji, with 106 kana spellings listed as keys and katakana folded to hiragana before the lookup, so サクラ and さくら land on the same entry. A romaji spelling with the long vowel written out (Shouta, Yuuki) is also tried in its short form (shota, yuki) when the long form is not a key itself.

Only the first word you type is looked up. The input is split on spaces and the first piece alone becomes the key, so a name typed surname-first is searched on the surname: read through the kanji table below if its characters are there, handled like an unknown name if not, and either way the given name after it is never used. Typing the two run together makes no difference, because that is one word too. Type the given name on its own.

A name written in kanji is read for what its characters mean, not for how they sound: whether 陽菜 is read Hina or Haruna, 陽 is still sunlight. So there is a table of 258 characters common in names, each with its meaning and two Korean syllables that carry it — and no column for a reading. The first syllable of your Korean name comes from the first character and the second from the characters after it, so 美咲 gives one from 美 and one from 咲. A one-character name draws on the syllables that suit that one character.

Characters that sit in a name mostly for their sound — 々・也・之・乃・奈・那・亜 — are passed over, so in 拓也 only 拓 is read. If any character is not in the table, or the name runs to four characters or more (taken to include a surname), this route is not used and the name is handled like one that is not in the dictionary. Joining up character meanings is not an attempt to guess what whoever named you had in mind.

A favourite word works too. 95 words typed in English or kana are put into the kanji they are usually written with and read through the same table — love becomes 愛, ほし becomes 星. A word that is also a listed name (Luna, Grace) is read as the name first.

Each entry in the name tables holds a one-line gloss of what the name means and three Korean syllables that suit it — three exactly, in every entry. The Japanese entries give the spelling the name is usually written with, the rest give an etymology. Yui's three are Yu, Eun and A. The two syllables of the name are taken from that shortlist, which is what makes the result come from the meaning rather than the sound.

Choosing a feminine or masculine style drops any candidate marked the other way. The mood does not narrow the candidates at all, on the name route or the kanji route; it only feeds the number. Only if the style empties the shortlist does the tool go back to the 24 — and even there it narrows by gender first and mood second, using the mood recorded against the name or the character rather than the one you picked on screen, because that is the more specific of the two.

Which parts are our choice

Each of the 24 syllables carries a meaning, but that meaning is our own one-line summary of how the hanja are commonly used. A row in that table holds five things — romaji, hangul, a gender mark, moods and that meaning — and there is no field for a character. What you see under a syllable is wording, not a character assigned to you.

The name glosses are written the same way. Of the 106 Japanese entries, 83 decline to fix a spelling — usually 結衣, usually 陽菜 — and the other 23 name a character outright, 桜 or 蓮, which still does not make it the character in your name. Either way the spelling never enters the calculation: what decides the result is the three Korean syllables recorded beside it. Typing your name in kanji turns that around — then the characters you wrote are what is read, though each meaning is the short sense a dictionary gives.

The 24 are each marked feminine, masculine or either. Feminine leaves 18 candidates and masculine 17, while the neutral style does no narrowing at all and leaves all 24 standing. Neutral does not mean "only the neutral syllables". That behaviour is a decision of ours, and it is written here rather than left to be inferred.

Why the same input always gives the same name

Your name, the style and the mood are joined into a single string, that string is turned into a number by a fixed procedure, and the number decides where the tables are read. Nothing is rolled fresh each time, so the same three inputs return the same name for as long as the tables stand. Change only the mood and the number changes with it — though a different number can still land on the same syllable, and when the name or kanji table has supplied a short shortlist, the same name coming back is common rather than rare.

For a name neither table can read, the spelling itself is the material the number is made from. It is not being sounded out into Hangul, so changing one letter changes the number completely and a near spelling does not give a near name. It does not guarantee a different name either: with 20 surnames and 24 syllables, two spellings can land on the same one by coincidence. Capitals make no difference. A space before the name is dropped, but a space after it is not — the name, style and mood are joined first and trimmed second, so a trailing space ends up inside the string and changes the number.

Making the name finishes inside this page. There is no request to a server anywhere in the code that makes it, and no model is called; loading the page itself is another matter. That said: this is a name for fun. It is not a name for documents, and since no birth date is taken it has nothing to do with the chart calculations elsewhere on this site.