Hangul letter names

The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul internationally, Hangeul in South Korea, and Choson'gŭl in North Korea, has had different names applied to its letters throughout its history and even currently.

Vowel names

Since the 1527 work Hunmong chahoe, vowels have been consistently named after the sound they produce if attached to a ㅇ.

Consonant names

Consonants have individual names, although these have varied across time and now between North and South Korea.

History

Names were not recorded for any of the letters when they were first promulgated in 1446.
A prominent hypothesis is that the consonants were possibly commonly referred to in the 15th and early 16th centuries by a single syllable containing the corresponding consonant and ㅣ, e.g. gi, ni, di, etc. The hypothesis's reasoning is that, in the Hunminjeongeum Eonhae, the particle ᄂᆞᆫ is used after each consonant. That particle is only used if the previous syllable is pronounced with a final vowel sound; otherwise it'd be ᄋᆞᆫ. Also, that particle is only used after positive vowels or the neutral vowel ㅣ. ㆍ was most commonly used among the positive vowels to illustrate sounds, making ㆍ or ㅣ seem the most likely candidates. Scholars then rely on various context clues to support the use of the latter over the former, including reasoning on the 1527 text Hunmong chahoe. That text was designed to reflect common practices around Hangul and calls for ㅣ names for syllables not used as finals.
Names for the base consonants were first attested to in the Hunmong chahoe, although it is unclear if Ch'oe coined the names himself. These names have formed the basis of the modern letter names. Many consonant names tend to follow a pattern where the first syllable has the consonant and ㅣ and the second 으 with the consonant on bottom, for example ㅁ is named mieum. This was done to illustrate the sound of the consonant in both the initial and final position. However, because the names were recorded in an approximate phonetic fashion using Hanja, some of the names broke that pattern when converted back to Korean. For example ㄱ should be gieuk by that pattern, but the Hanja given for it yields giyeok when converted back. Consonants that were then only used as initials and not finals had names following a different pattern: they were a single syllable containing the consonant and ㅣ. For example, the name of ㅋ was ki. The 1569 Buddhist text Chinŏnjip used the same names.
In the 1909 report Kungmun yŏn'gu ŭijŏngan by the government-sponsored Hangul research organization, the names of all basic consonants were given in the ㅣ으 pattern, including the formerly irregular names and the names of non-final consonants.
The 1933 preserved several historical spellings of names, like giyeok, but adopted the ㅣ으 pattern for the non-final consonants that had ㅣ names in the Hunmong chahoe. It was decided to do this as those letters had become used as finals by this point. South Korea still maintains the names chosen by the UHO. It was felt that some of these names had a long tradition, and keeping them would be minimally disruptive. North Korea adopted the apparent intended names of the consonants that broke the ㅣ으 pattern and uses toen instead of ssang for the duplicated consonants. The main reason for this was that ssang is a Sino-Korean word, which North Korea sometimes discourages in favor of native Korean vocabulary.

''Gyeoremal-keunsajeon'' consonant names

The Gyeoremal-keunsajeon is a joint North–South Korea dictionary project compiled by. Its compilation began in 2004. The joint commission agreed to adopt the regularized spellings of the base consonant names used by North Korea, but adopt the South Korean practice of using ssang on the doubled consonants. South Korean linguist Hong Yun-pyo argues that this practice is likely to stay limited to use in this dictionary.

Archaic letter names

Many archaic letters did not have official names; even into the modern period, scholars described them using a variety of names. In 1992, the National Institute of Korean Language met and decided which official names to give the archaic letters; these names were to be applied to Unicode. These names were then romanized using the ISO/TR 11941 romanization system.

Jamo	Name	RR	Unicode
ㅱ	가벼운 미음	gabyeoun mieum	kapyeoun mieum
ㅸ	가벼운 비읍	gabyeoun bieup	kapyeoun pieup
ㅿ	반시옷	bansiot	pansios
ㆆ	여린 히읗	yeorin hieut	yeorin hieuh
ㆁ	옛이응	yennieung	yesieung
ㆄ	가벼운 피읖	gabyeoun pieup	kapyeoun phieuph
ㅹ	가벼운 쌍비읍	gabyeoun ssangbieup	kapyeoun ssangpieup
ᅇ	쌍이응	ssangieung	ssangieung
ㆅ	쌍히읗	ssanghieut	ssanghieuh
ㆍ	아래아	araea	araea
ᆢ	쌍아래아	ssangaraea	ssangaraea
ᄼ	치두음 시옷	chidueum siot	chitueum sios
ᄽ	치두음 쌍시옷	chidueum ssangsiot	chitueum ssangsios
ᄾ	정치음 시옷	jeongchieum siot	ceongchieum sios
ᄿ	정치음 쌍시옷	jeongchieum ssangsiot	ceongchieum ssangsios
ᅎ	치두음 지읒	chidueum jieut	chitueum cieuc
ᅏ	치두음 쌍지읒	chideum ssangjieut	chitueum ssangcieuc
ᅐ	정치음 지읒	jeongchieum jieut	ceongchieum cieuc
ᅑ	정치음 쌍지읒	jeongchieum ssangjieut	ceongchieum ssangcieuc
ᅔ	치두음 치읓	chidueum chieut	chitueum chieuch
ᅕ	정치음 치읓	jeongchieum chieut	ceongchieum chieuch