Hyun, also spelled Hyeon or Hyon, Hyoun, is a Korean surname, a single-syllable Korean given name, and an element in many two-syllable Korean given names.[1] As given name meaning differs based on the hanja used to write it. There are 42 hanja with the reading "hyun"[2] on the South Korean government's official list of hanja which may be used in given names.
Pronunciation | /hjʌn/ |
---|---|
Origin | |
Word/name | Korean |
Meaning | Different depending on Hanja |
Other names | |
Alternative spelling | Hyeon, Hyon, Hyoun |
Hyun | |
Hangul | 현 |
---|---|
Hanja | 賢, 炫, 玄, 顯, and others |
Revised Romanization | Hyeon |
McCune–Reischauer | Hyŏn |
IPA | [hjʌn] |
The family name Hyun is written with only one hanja (玄; 검을 현 geomeul hyeon) meaning "dark" or "mysterious". The 2000 South Korean Census found 81,807 people and 25,547 households with this family name.[3] In a study by the National Institute of the Korean Language based on 2007 application data for South Korean passports, it was found that 80.5% of people with this surname spelled it in Latin letters as Hyun in their passports. Another 14.9% spelled it as Hyeon, and 2.2% as Hyoun. Rarer alternative spellings (the remaining 2.4%) included Heon and Hyean.[4]
The surviving bon-gwan (origin of a clan lineage, not necessarily the actual residence of the clan members) as of 2000 included:
People with the surname Hyun include:
Many names containing this syllable have been popular for newborn children in South Korea, for newborn girls in the 1950s through the 1990s, and for newborn boys from the 1980s up through the 2010s:[11]
Other given names containing this element include:
People with the single-syllable given name Hyun include: