How were korean consonant names made?

How Were Korean Consonant Names Made?

In 1443 (the 25th year of King Sejong's reign), King Sejong created Hangeul and named it Hunminjeongeum (훈민정음), which is also the title of the book that introduced the script. The book was published in 1446 after three years of testing.

However, the original book does not include the actual names of consonants and vowels, so it is unknown how King Sejong himself referred to the letters.

In 1527, a scholar named Choi Se-jin published a book titled Hunmongjahoe (훈몽자회), a Chinese character primer for children. This book included 3,360 Chinese characters and explained their meaning and pronunciation using Hangeul.

For example:
木 → 나무 (meaning), 목 (sound)
水 → 물 (meaning), 수 (sound)

To teach the Korean alphabet to those unfamiliar with it, Choi Se-jin also assigned names to each consonant and vowel using a systematic method:

• The first syllable combines the consonant with ㅣ to show the initial sound.
• The second syllable combines ㅡ with the consonant to show the final/batchim sound.

For example, ㄴ becomes 니은 because it uses ㄴ + ㅣ (initial) and ㅡ + ㄴ (final).

Chinese characters with matching pronunciation were used to write the names, such as 尼隱 for 니은. However, some sounds like 기윽, 디읃, 시읏 could not be properly represented with Chinese characters.

To solve this, he adjusted the names to 기역, 디귿, 시옷, which matched Korean pronunciation more closely without relying on exact Chinese character pairs.

Final Set of Consonant Names

• Standard Method: 니은, 리을, 미음, 비읍, 이응, 지읒, 치읓, 키읔, 티읕, 피읖, 히읗
• Adjusted Names: 기역, 디귿, 시옷

✅ The 14 basic consonant names are:
기역, 니은, 디귿, 리을, 미음, 비읍, 시옷, 이응, 지읒, 치읓, 키읔, 티읕, 피읖, 히읗