LTI Korea 
DLKL 
SIWF 
[Delve] How do Korean authors come up with character names? scrap
by Kang Young-sook
Translated by Susan K
December 22, 2020
![[Delve] How do Korean authors come up with character names? 이미지](/fileDownload.do;jsessionid=16F34BC28CDCBABECD45CBC8CD49521A?srvFile=20211215225241329593.webp&usrFile=50_specialsection_delve1_article(1078x516).webp&target=default&width=100&height=100&folder=columns)
Author Bio 작가 소개
Kang Young-sook
Recipient of the 2025 Arts Council Korea Literature Fellowship
Kang Young-sook is a feminist South Korean author. She often writes about the female grotesque, delving into varying genres, such as urban noir, fantasy, and climate fiction. Since her debut in 1998, she has published a number of novels and short story collections, and has received many prestigious awards, such as the Hanguk Ilbo Literature Prize, Kim Yujeong Literary Award, and Lee Hyo-seok Literature Award, among others.
She participated in the International Writing Program’s fall residency at the University of Iowa in 2009, and was also a visiting writer-in-residence at UC Berkeley in 2014. In November 2019 she was writer in residence at Dragon Hall in Norwich.
n this section, members of our editorial board answer questions about Korean literature culled from an open survey from our readers. Touching upon recent trends, historical antecedents, and literary devices, we hope you enjoy examining some deeper aspects of thoughts readers have had about Korean literature.—Ed.
How do Korean authors come up with character names? Do they consider the meaning when naming the characters?
Naming is a very significant factor in character creation. It is the most direct way to provide concreteness and vitality to a character. But creating character names is always a contemplative and hesitant process. In a story, the name of a character is never objective. No matter how common the name may be, there’s always a meaning behind it. And once it’s decided, the name becomes inseparable from the character and works subconsciously in the reader’s mind.
Moreover, the name of a character can serve as a significant factor that reflects the time period of that particular work. For instance, in Kim Yujung’s “Wanderer” (“Sangol nageune”) from the 1930s, the female protagonist is referred to as nageune, “the wanderer.” This wanderer shows up at a village one day, and not much is told about the character. But unlike the common modern-day usage, nageune in this short story refers to a woman. In the
mid-1990s, the pronouns “geu” (he) and “geunyeo” (she) were frequently used in place of character names. The first person pronoun “uri” (we or us) was often used as well. As Korea became a highly industrialized society, the character names in works of fiction became more and more anonymous until only the last names—Kim, Lee, Park—were used. Recently, regular Korean names such as Park Jungchul, Kim Minji, and Lee Bokyung are being used as character names. The expansion of democracy and the development of civil society are reflected in character naming, providing greater significance to each individual, each character.
One crucial thing to consider when naming a character is the rhythm. That lingering feeling after the name is called out—this must be taken into consideration. And more than anything else, the author must like it. It must sound friendly, too, and since it plays the role of notifying the reader that something important has happened, it must sound trustworthy. But oftentimes, in recent works, names are replaced by initials and written merely as P or A. The purpose of this is to eliminate any meaning or prejudice the name might hold. Similarly, there has been a tendency to not clarify where the story is taking place, deliberately avoiding any country or place names. In such cases, there must be an internal inevitability as to establishing the characters as “one-letter beings,” and the author must consider if such an attempt works well with the overall meaning of the story and effectively brings aesthetic changes. In the process of building a linguistic structure called fiction, naming a character is therefore a challenging but important task.
Translated by Susan K
Writer 필자 소개
Kang Young-sook
Translator 번역가 소개
Susan K
Did you enjoy this article? 별점
Did you enjoy this article? Please rate your experience
More From Issue Vol. 50 Winter 2020
