Why your name turns into that Hangul

Type a name into the box at the top of this site and you get Hangul back. The result is not random, and it is not a letter-for-letter swap either. It follows a handful of rules that Korean applies to every foreign word it borrows, and once you know them the output stops looking arbitrary.

Korean writes sounds into blocks, not letters into a line

English writes letters one after another. Korean stacks each syllable into a square block: a starting consonant, then a vowel, and optionally a final consonant tucked underneath. That block is the unit, not the letter.

So the first thing that happens to your name is that it gets re-chopped into syllables. Mina is m-i-n-a in English letters, but in Korean it is two blocks: 미 (m + i) and 나 (n + a). The n does not get a block of its own, because it has a vowel after it to attach to.

This is why a naive letter-by-letter conversion produces nonsense. Run Jordan through one and you get 즈오르드아느 — six blocks, one per letter, unreadable. Stack it properly and you get 조단: two blocks, which is roughly what a Korean speaker would say.

Every block needs a vowel

A Korean syllable block cannot exist without a vowel. This is the single rule that explains most of what looks strange about Korean renderings of English words.

When an English consonant has no vowel to attach to and cannot be tucked underneath as a final, Korean gives it the vowel 으 (eu), which is about as close to "no vowel" as Korean gets. That is why:

• Mark → 마크 (ma-keu). The k has nothing after it, so it takes 으.
• Chris → 크리스 (keu-ri-seu). Both the opening k and the closing s need their own blocks.
• Max → 막스 (mak-seu). The x is really two sounds, k and s.

English speakers often read this as Korean "adding extra syllables". It is not adding anything — it is writing what the sounds need in order to be written at all.

Which consonants can go underneath

A final consonant inside a block is called a batchim. Not every consonant works there, and for foreign words Korean is conservative about which it uses: ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ and ㅇ do most of the work.

Ben → 벤, with the n tucked under. Tom → 톰, with the m tucked under. Liam → 리암, same idea. Compare that with David → 다비드, where the final d gets its own 드 block because a d-sound at the end of a foreign word usually does.

The r at the end goes quiet

English spells an r at the end of a syllable that most English accents barely pronounce. Korean does not write it at all.

• Mark → 마크, not 말크.
• Peter → 페테, and in practice Koreans write 피터.
• Jordan → 조단, and in practice 조던.

An l at the end of a syllable is different — that one is real, and it becomes the batchim ㄹ. This is why Seoul is 서울 with the l tucked underneath, while the r in Mark simply vanishes.

An l between two vowels gets written twice

This one surprises people. When an l sits between two vowels, Korean writes ㄹ twice: once as the final of the block before, once as the start of the block after.

• Emily → 에밀리, not 에미리.
• Olivia → 올리비아, not 오리비아.
• Charlie → 찰리.

The reason is phonetic. A single ㄹ between vowels is pronounced as a light flap, closer to an English r. Doubling it forces the l sound English speakers expect.

Silent letters go silent

Korean writes sound, so English spelling conventions that are not pronounced get dropped. A trailing h disappears — Sarah → 사라, Hannah → 한나. The ch in Chris is a k sound, not a ch sound, so it is written ㅋ. A c before e, i or y is an s sound.

Why this is not your official Korean name

Everything above is transliteration: writing the sound of a foreign name in Korean letters. That is a different thing from a Korean name.

A Korean name is usually a one-syllable family name plus a two-syllable given name, and the given name is normally chosen with hanja — Chinese characters — that carry meaning. 지우 might be written with characters meaning "wisdom" and "divine". Choosing those is a deliberate act, often with a naming specialist involved, and it is not something a phonetic map can do.