Seong
성 (姓)
The family name or surname in Korean naming convention, always placed before the given name and shared by all members of a patrilineal clan.
In Korean culture, the seong (성/姓) is the family name that identifies a person's patrilineal lineage. Unlike Western naming conventions where the surname comes last, the Korean seong always precedes the given name. For example, in the name Kim Minjun (김민준), Kim is the seong. There are approximately 5,000 registered family names in South Korea, but the vast majority of the population shares a remarkably small number of them — the top five surnames (Kim, Lee, Park, Choi, and Jeong) account for over half of all Koreans.
Historical Origins
Korean surnames were historically derived from Chinese naming practices and were first adopted by the royal and aristocratic classes during the Three Kingdoms period (57 BCE–668 CE). Commoners did not widely adopt surnames until the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897), when Confucian social structures became deeply embedded in Korean society. The concentration of a few dominant surnames is partly a result of historical practices where freed slaves and commoners adopted the surnames of prestigious yangban (aristocratic) families.
Modern Significance
Today, Korean law requires every citizen to have a seong, and children inherit their father's surname by default, though a 2005 legal revision allows children to take the mother's surname under certain conditions. The seong alone does not uniquely identify a clan — two people with the surname Kim may belong to entirely different clans distinguished by their bon-gwan (ancestral seat). Historically, marriage between individuals sharing the same seong and bon-gwan was prohibited, though this law was abolished in 2005.