Court-Approved Hanja
인명용 한자 (人名用 漢字)
The official list of Chinese characters approved by the South Korean Supreme Court for use in personal names on legal documents and family registers.
The court-approved hanja list (인명용 한자/人名用 漢字) is an official roster of Chinese characters that the South Korean Supreme Court has designated as permissible for use in personal names on legal documents, including birth registrations and family registers (가족관계등록부). As of the most recent revision, the list contains approximately 8,142 characters — a carefully curated subset of the tens of thousands of hanja characters that exist in the broader Chinese character corpus. Any hanja used in a legally registered name must appear on this list.
History and Purpose
The system was established to prevent the use of obscure, archaic, or visually complex characters that would be difficult to process in government records, computer systems, and everyday communication. The original list was much smaller and has been expanded multiple times in response to public demand. Notable expansions occurred in 1991, 2007, 2015, and subsequent years, each time adding characters that parents had petitioned to use. The Supreme Court's Family Registration Division reviews requests and periodically publishes updated lists. Characters are evaluated based on their prevalence in historical naming, ease of digital encoding, and absence of strongly negative meanings.
Impact on Naming
The approved hanja list directly shapes Korean naming culture. Parents who wish to use a hanja name must ensure their chosen characters appear on the list, or the birth registration will be rejected. This has occasionally caused controversy when parents select characters with deep personal or family significance that happen to fall outside the approved set. In such cases, families can petition the Supreme Court to add the character, though the process can take months. The system represents a pragmatic balance between preserving the rich tradition of hanja-based naming and the practical requirements of modern legal and digital infrastructure. Notably, this restriction applies only to hanja — parents who choose pure Korean (goyueo) names written entirely in Hangul face no such limitation.