Letter Names ( 한글 hangul )

 

Hangul is a featural alphabet of 24 consonant and vowel letters. However, instead of being written sequentially like the letters of the Latin alphabet, Hangul letters are grouped into blocks, such as 한 han, each of which transcribes a syllable.

The hangul arrangement is called the ganada order, (가나다 순) which is basically an alphabetical order named after the first three letters (g, n, d) affixed to the first vowel (a). The letters were named by Choe Sejin in 1527. North Korea regularized the names when it made Hangul its official orthography.

Consonant Names

The modern consonants have two-syllable names, with the consonant coming both at the beginning and end of the name, as follows:

All consonants in North Korea, and all but three in the more traditional nomenclature used in South Korea, have names of the format of letter + i + eu + letter. For example, Choi wrote bieup with the hanja 非 bi 邑 eup. The names of g, d, and s are exceptions because there were no hanja for euk, eut, and eus. 役 yeok is used in place of euk. Since there is no hanja that ends in t or s, Choi chose two hanja to be read in their Korean gloss, 末 kkeut "end" and 衣 ot "clothes".

Originally, Choi gave j, ch, k, t, p, and h the irregular one-syllable names of ji, chi, ki, ti, pi, and hi, because they should not be used as final consonants, as specified in Hunmin jeong-eum. But after the establishment of the new orthography in 1933, which allowed all consonants to be used as finals, the names were changed to the present forms.

The double consonants are named with the word 쌍/雙 ssang, meaning "twin" or "double", or with 된 doen in North Korea, meaning "strong". Thus:

In North Korea, an alternate way to refer to a consonant is by the name letter + ŭ (ㅡ), for example, 그 kŭ for the letter ㄱ, 쓰 ssŭ for the letter ㅆ, etc.

Vowel Names

The names of the vowel letters are simply the vowel itself, written with the null initial ㅇ ieung and the vowel being named. Thus:

In the Seoul dialect of Modern Korean, e(ㅔ) and ae(ㅐ) have no distinction in pronunciation. For this reason they are denoted as eo-i(어-이) for e(ㅔ) and a-i(아-이) for ae(ㅐ) when giving the spelling of a word or name in spoken conversation.

 

Related Articles

• About Hangul 한글
• Letter Design
• Letter Names
• Sorting Order

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