Korean names and the slave question

By Mark Peterson

I am going to return to a familiar story for me, the remarkable story of Korean family names. I am returning to this issue because I still get questions and comments based on popular misinformation and mistaken ideas that still circulate in Korea.

The mistaken ideas: (1) that traditionally, only yangban aristocrats had surnames ― and that commoners and slaves didn't acquire surnames until the 20th century; (2) that the high frequency of the names Kim, Yi and Bak are because of all the slaves who took names and merely copied the most common surnames ― Kim, Yi and Bak, and (3) that slaves numbered between 90 percent or at least 50 percent of the population.

Let's take these three items in reverse order. The estimates of slaves at 90 percent is ridiculous and even 50 percent is a great exaggeration. At the outset of the Joseon Kingdom slave-holdings may have been as high as 40 percent, but that number declined gradually over time, especially when Korea reached the period of increased commercial activity of the 18th and 19th centuries. At the point in the early 20th century when slaves were able to adopt surnames, the percentage of population that were slaves was probably closer to 20 percent.

The idea that the reason for so many Kim, Yi and Bak surnames was that a large slave population adopted those names can also be proven false by the fact that the records we have for the names of the population before the 20th century already showed a preponderance of Kim, Yi and Bak. Records include the examination rosters, the index to names mentioned in the Sillok, names of authors of books, and many other historical records.

The exam rosters, for example, show 20 percent of passers throughout the Joseon period were named Yi. A total of 15 percent were Kim, and 6 percent were Pak. In present day Korea, Kim is 21 percent, Yi is 15 percent and Bak is 8 percent ― the Kim and Yi traded places at the top.

There's probably a good reason for that ― the Yi were the royal family and had greater privilege and opportunity to study for, and pass the exams ― probably greater than their population proportion in society. The Kims probably numbered more than their representation in the exams because the name had been around for so long and there were probably more people who bore the name than could keep up with the tradition of studying for the exams.

The surnames below the top three, say, the names in the second tier, the top 10 or top 20 on the exam rosters, look very much like the names of second tier in today's society. There were Jeong, Choe, Kang, Yun, Cho, An, Hong, O, Seo, Heo, Bae, Baek ― the names we hear in the group under Kim, Yi and Bak today.

What does this mean? It means the nameless slaves took a wide range of names ― not just Kim, Yi and Bak. Does it mean that slaves took their master's names? Yes and no. The numbers are not exactly the same ― for example, Choe is #5 today, but was #9 on the exam list.

Here are some examples from the first and second tier, may I say, of surnames in Korea.

Today
Kim 21%
Yi 15%
Bak 8%
Jeong 5%
Choe 5%
Cho 3%
Kang 3%
Yun 2%
Im 2%

Joseon era
Yi 20%
Kim 14%
Bak 6%
Jeong 5%
Yun 4%
Cho 4%
Hong 3%
Ryu 3%
Choe 3%

You see how Choe increase from 3 percent to 5 percent. Cho decreased from 4 percent to 3 percent. We can say Choe was +2. Cho was -1. In similar manner the following might be an easy way to understand ― this list shows how much the surname increased or decreased as a percentage of the population from pre-20th century, to post-20th century. The order is that of passers of exams, after Yi, Kim, Bak and Jeong:

Yun -2, Cho +1, Hong -2, Ryu -1, Kwon -1, Han -0.6, Shin +0.1, Song -0.4, Min -1.2,
Kang +0.9, An +0.1, Shim -0.4, O +0.1, Seo +0.3, Nam +0.3, Hwang -0.2 etc etc.

You see the numbers didn't move much at all ― an indication that slaves acquiring surnames was roughly, within a percentage point or two, of the Joseon era distribution of names.

The exception is Kim which increased by 7 percent, Yi decreased by 5 percent, and all the rest are within a percentage point or two ― or a fraction thereof.

So, I think we can say that a slightly greater number of slaves took the name Kim, but with only a 7 percent increase, not 7 percent of the population, we can conclude that there was not a great "run on" the name of Kim, and that most Kims today are heirs to the nobility of Silla and Gaya, whose founding kings were named Kim.

This further underscores the thing I have been saying about the disproportional numbers of people in Korea with royal names, Kim, Yi Bak as truly a uniquely Korean phenomenon that underscores the history of peaceful Korea. The reason for so many Kim, Yi and Bak was the non-destruction of dynastic families at the fall of dynasties ― so much unlike other countries of the world.

Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.