Names for Men and Women

Here are some common Chinese and Korean names for men and women. The meanings of the names are given in English.

1. A unit of measurement for weighing rice.
2. A name given to a male slave. It means hardiness.
3. A nickname given to a boy. It is a traditional belief that a boy has to be given an ugly nickname. Otherwise, monsters would take him away from the family. This is similar to tales about the bogeyman.
4. During the Japanese colonization of Korea, Korean women had to change their names by adopting Japanese names, many of which consist of the common character "child/children." Incidentally, the Chinese character for "child/children" also means a male child.
5. The character "to terminate", which implies halting the birth of baby girls, is not used nowadays in Korea. In older generations, families would use "terminate" as one of the characters for a girl's name, clearly indicating the traditional family's traditional preference for a boy.