Is Dasom a Good Korean Name? What Native Korean Names Mean in Saju

Dasom (다솜) turns up on almost every list of pretty Korean names. It is also a slightly unusual one: it has no hanja at all, which changes how traditional saju naming looks at it.

Is Dasom a good Korean name?

Dasom is a real, well-liked Korean given name that comes from an old poetic word for love. Whether it suits a particular person isn’t a question of good or bad — in saju naming, it depends on which elements that person’s chart is asking for.

What does Dasom mean?

Dasom is usually explained as an archaic Korean word for love, revived as a given name. It is a native Korean word (순우리말), not a Chinese-derived one, so its meaning lives in the word itself rather than in characters.

What is a native Korean name?

A native Korean name is made from Korean words rather than hanja, the Chinese characters behind most Korean given names. Well-known examples include Dasom (love), Narae (wings) and Seulgi (wisdom), and parents tend to choose them for how they sound and what the word means.

Most Korean given names work differently. A name like Ji-woo is written in hangul but chosen for its hanja, and the same sound can be written with several different characters, each with its own meaning.

How does saju naming read a name without hanja?

With no characters to read, traditional naming looks only at sound. The first consonant of each syllable belongs to one of the five elements, so Dasom is read by both its ㄷ and its ㅅ.

In the common tables, ㄱ and ㅋ are wood, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ and ㅌ are fire, and ㅅ, ㅈ and ㅊ are metal. Schools of naming disagree about a few sounds — ㅇ, ㅎ, ㅁ, ㅂ and ㅍ are placed differently in different traditions — so a namer will usually say which table they follow.

Which elements does Dasom carry?

Dasom’s first syllable, 다, begins with ㄷ, which is fire; its second, 솜, begins with ㅅ, which is metal. So in sound-based naming, Dasom tends to be read as a fire-and-metal name.

That reading only means something next to a chart. A chart that tends to lack fire or metal might welcome those sounds; a chart already heavy in them might lean toward a different name.

How is a hanja name matched to a chart?

A hanja name is matched character by character. The name-giver reads which elements the chart is short on, then chooses hanja that carry them — often through the character’s radical, such as the fire radical in 炫 (bright).

That is why hanja names can be tuned to a chart more precisely than native names. It is also why PAL:JA’s Korean name generator currently suggests hanja names only.

Should I choose a native Korean name or a hanja name?

Either can be a real, natural Korean name. A native name tends to suit someone who wants a clear Korean word with a meaning anyone can hear; a hanja name tends to suit someone who wants a name matched to their chart syllable by syllable.

If you love a native name like Dasom, it is still worth saying it aloud with your family name and checking it doesn’t overlap with a brand or slang word — the same checks any Korean name goes through.

How do I find a Korean name for my chart?

Enter your birth date, time and birthplace in the calculator below. PAL:JA calculates your chart, then takes you to a Korean name matched to the elements it is asking for.