About Ireum
Ireum (이름) is the Korean word for “name”. We help you find a Korean name that real people in Korea use, and then learn your first Korean words from it.
Real names, not made-up ones
Every name we suggest is one that people in Korea really use. Our list comes from public records of people from South Korea and from the Supreme Court of Korea's statistics of names given to babies.
We tag each name by era (Classic, Timeless, Modern, Trending) and by how often it is given to girls or boys, so you can tell how it will sound to Koreans.
How we match your name
First we listen to your name: we turn it into sounds, the way an English or Spanish speaker says it. Then we compare those sounds with every Korean name and keep the ones that sound closest — the first sound and the stressed sound count most.
For about 120 popular names we also know what the name means (Sophia means “wisdom”), so we look for Korean names whose hanja carry the same meaning.
We leave out names that read like everyday words or have awkward meanings, and people on our team review the results to make them better.
About the hanja
Most Korean names can be written with hanja (Chinese characters), and each one has a meaning. We pick hanja from Korea's official list of characters for names. Many Koreans with the same name write it with different hanja.
Then, learn Korean
Your name is a good first lesson. Each hanja in it appears in everyday Korean words, so we turn your name into a small word deck you can learn in a few minutes.