In designing a character, I am looking for advise on which form of a name I should use.
Jina Kim was the original name chosen which I was taught by my friend was an Americanized (Romanized?) version of Jin-ha Kim - yet while doing my research it seems the South Korean government has at least a couple hundred different ways of actually recording it.
My goal is to create a name recognizable as Korean (similar to singers and other famous people) but unique enough to make her own impression.
Would Jina Kim be acceptable worldwide or should I use Jin-ha Kim and have the name mirror real life people?
Any advise from someone of the Korean culture would be appreciated.
Iāve seen Korean names most commonly anglicized in either the second way or with that spelling but minus the dash. I did English tutoring for a while while I was in high school for two sisters named Linha and Yoonha respectively and I had a classmate whose full first name Jin Young
I tried looking on behindthename.com, but it doesnāt have a whole lot of Korean names yet so it doesnāt have it on the main database. It does have Ji-na and Jin-a as user submitted names though (with the meaning āprecious childā and hanja(?) spelling āģ§ģā). Iāve rarely seen Korean names anglicized that way though and the main database uses names spelled in a similar way to Jin-ha, so I feel like Jin-ha would be most easily recognizable. Just āJinaā could be easily read as an alternate spelling of āGinaā
I think the best way to find the most āacceptedā style of romanization for the name though would to be look at naming sites or even lists of Korean celebrities that are created for a mainly English speaking audience in mind because they tend try to have a standard style so everything is recognizable and people could search for specific people without much difficulty. With databases by things like the South Korean government, the standard is in Hangul already so there probably isnāt much concern in deciding a standard romanization
Thank you for your input. I originally thought of this too, so I looked up the name in Wikipedia and the spelling is all over the place with singers, with Jin-a being most popular with younger singers and Ji-na being popular with older singers ā¦ then I started getting confused looking further into it with spellings being all over the map. ><
Oh, Iām Korean and usually I see it done as Jin-Ha/Jin-ha rather than Jina but usually most people donāt include the dash? So it would probably be more like Jinha Kim. Of course itās really fine either way, you know? But I think Anglicization isnāt done all that often, at least where Iām from.
No problem, I hope that helps a little Thanks for actually taking the time to make sure the naming is correct, most writers usually donāt do that.
Oh, replying to the edit, it does change the meaning because one is pronounced Jin-AH in Korean and the other is pronounced Jin-HA And the Chinese characters assigned to the names can be vastly different too.
Ooooh, yeah, wikipedia can get confusing with that sometimes And sometimes with singers (in most Asian countries it seems, not just Korea), especially with newer ones, they like to stylize their names/stage names in certain ways which makes things more confusing
With looking at multiple databases at least, you could probably eventually figure out which version is more popular?
I think Iāll stick with Jinha Kim. That way I can honor my friend who helped me originally.
For the future Iāll be doing more research for sure. I just didnāt realize the complexity when I was envisioning this characterā¦ and now Iām running into deadlines and such to get things completed for this project
@anon86661845 - While I have you here, is Danh Jao, an acceptable Vietnamese American name?
Iāve actually never heard Jao as a last name before and the best result I can find googling it is of a person whose father was ethnically Chinese/Hoa. From skimming a bit, it seems like it would be most used within that ethnic minority, so it would probably be an uncommon but okay name
With Danh, I think I either have a distance cousin or a former classmate with that name so itās fine too
Though with that name, if his family is from Northern Vietnam, the ādā in his name would be pronounced like a āzā while if theyāre from Southern Vietnam, it would be kind of like a āyā sound. Iām not super familiar with any type of linguistic stuff, so I donāt know if there would be a different variation for Central Vietnam? Vietnam is always divided into three regions, yet Iāve only really heard people talk about North and South in terms of dialect for some reason
(And also, unrelated, but my entire life I thought my family was Southern Vietnamese since all my relatives still in Vietnam live in Saigon, but this past summer I learned that my grandparents were both actually from Northern Vietnam and moved down South. I guess that solved the mystery of why one of my aunts has a Northern accent)
Writing out romanized Korean first names has been done at least three different ways. With the two elements as separate elements (Jin Ha), with the two elements connected by a hyphen (Jin-Ha), and with the two elements run together (Jinha). You can see that in the author information for this paper by three Koreans: āUsersā Music Information Needs and Behaviors: Design Implications for Music Information Retrieval Systemsā (link goes to a pdf).
Also note that an individual may write their name in English using more than one method. The official romanization of Korean allows for both hyphenated and combined romanizations of given names. I tend to write Korean names in my stories in the combined form, since to me that better reflects how the name is written in hangeul.
Korean names often have Chinese characters (called hanja in Korean) associated with them. Here is the Naver dictionary list of possible hanja for jin (ģ§) and possible hanja for ha (ķ) as well as the Korean-English dictionary (you tend not to get much if you search by the hanja in the Korean-English dictionary, so youāll have to grab the hangeul and search by that, though it may be easier to use Wiktionary for looking up the meanings).
And as @Lilypad76 pointed out, Jina (ģ§ģ) and Jinha (ģ§ķ) are different.
For the name ź¹ģ§ķ (Kim Jin Ha) the correct way would be Jinha Kim. However it is very common for names to be anglicised to a more common English name. In this case, that would likely be Jina or Gina. Iād stick with Jinha, though, as it leaves no doubt over the nationality of the character. No hyphens are needed.
Thanks for actually taking the time to make sure the naming is correct, most writers usually donāt do that.
And sometimes with singers (in most Asian countries it seems, not just Korea), especially with newer ones, they like to stylize their names/stage names in certain ways which makes things more confusing
