The top 10
These are the ten most common surnames in South Korea in the 2015 census (Statistics Korea), with their Hanja and the usual English spellings:
| Surname | Hanja | Common spellings | Share of population |
|---|---|---|---|
| 김 | 金 | Kim | 21.5% |
| 이 | 李 | Lee, Yi, Rhee | 14.7% |
| 박 | 朴 | Park, Pak, Bak | 8.4% |
| 최 | 崔 | Choi, Choe | 4.7% |
| 정 | 鄭 | Jung, Jeong, Chung | 4.3% |
| 강 | 姜 | Kang | 2.4% |
| 조 | 趙 | Cho, Jo | 2.1% |
| 윤 | 尹 | Yoon, Yun | 2.1% |
| 장 | 張 | Jang, Chang | 2.0% |
| 임 | 林 | Lim, Im | 1.7% |
Together they cover about 64% of the population.
Why “Lee” and not “I”
The surname 이 (李) is pronounced like the English letter E. Written as “I” it would look like a pronoun, so most people use Lee, Yi or Rhee. Park is pronounced closer to “Bahk”, and Choi closer to “Chweh”. English spellings of surnames were chosen family by family, which is why the same name has several forms.
The initial-sound rule
South Korean pronunciation drops or softens some sounds at the start of a word (두음법칙). That is why 李 is 이 in the South but 리 in the North, and 林 is 임 rather than 림. Since 2007 people may register some of these surnames with the original sound, such as 류 instead of 유.
Same surname, different clans
A surname alone does not mean two people are related. Each surname is divided into clans (본관) named after a place: Gimhae Kim, Jeonju Lee, Miryang Park, and so on. Gimhae Kim is the biggest clan in Korea with more than four million people.
Surnames on this site
When you use our birthday mode, the surname is picked from this top-10 list by the last digit of your birth year, so the result always looks like a real Korean name. In the name converter, your own surname is written in Hangul instead.
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Updated 2026-10-23