Brand Incubating
Your brand name in Korea: three paths
Three ways to write your brand name in Korea: keep the original, transcribe the sound into Hangul, or build a new Korean name. When to choose each, and what to check before you decide.
Deciding how to write your brand name in Korea means choosing one primary form and keeping the other as a secondary. There are three paths — keep the original spelling, write the sound in Hangul, or build a new Korean name from the meaning. Most companies keep the original and add one Hangul form to use alongside it. If you do not decide, sales pages, articles and customers each start spelling it their own way, and pulling those spellings back together later takes several times longer. The steps below take about a week.
How do the three paths differ
They differ in how much of the name changes. Keeping the original changes nothing, writing the sound changes only the letters, and building from the meaning changes the name itself.
| Path | How it is written | Where it is strong | Where the work is |
| Original spelling | The home-market form stays as it is | Logo, packaging and documents stay one set | People say it differently from each other |
| Sound in Hangul | The pronunciation is transcribed into Korean letters | Easy to say, and the words people search with gather in one place | Several candidates appear and one has to be chosen |
| New Korean name | A new Korean name is built from the meaning | The meaning reads instantly and sticks | You now manage two names |
The three are not mutually exclusive. In practice the usual answer is the original as the primary form plus one Hangul form. Treating it as a choice of one out of three is what makes the decision drag on.
When do you choose each one
The criteria are the shape of the name and the places it is used, not taste.
- Original spelling — a short Latin-letter name of 3 to 7 characters that people converge on one way of reading. Also when packaging and logo cannot differ by country.
- Sound in Hangul — when the name runs past 8 characters, or the original pronunciation is unfamiliar. When the name has to be said out loud: broadcasts, video, phone support. Most companies start here.
- New Korean name — when the transcribed sound reads as something else in Korean. When it runs past 8 Hangul characters and becomes hard to say. When a name that sounds the same is already in wide use.
Look at a new name last. A new name breaks the link to the home-market name, so someone who arrives searching the original cannot tell it is the same company. If you do build one, always keep a place where both names are printed side by side.
Where does the sound slip when it is transcribed
Korean lacks some of the sounds your language has, and it has rules yours does not. There are roughly six places where things slip.
| Where it slips | What happens | What to do while deciding |
| Missing consonants | Different original sounds collapse into the same Hangul letter | Check whether another name ends up spelled the same way |
| Consonant clusters | Vowels are inserted between them and the character count grows | Count the added characters; past 8, prepare a shortened form as well |
| Final consonants | A sound that was barely voiced takes up a full character | Keep a version with the last character dropped among the candidates |
| Split vowels | One sound splits into two or three candidates | Count how people actually read it and settle on one |
| Stress | It disappears in writing and the name moves closer to others | Read the candidates aloud and check they stay distinct |
| A spelling already in use | Your form and the one the market uses are different | Make one of them primary and absorb the other by printing it alongside |
The last row is where companies get stuck most often. If products arrived before the company set a spelling, the market spelling has already hardened. Rather than pushing your own form, it is faster to make the one already in use the primary form — changing what people say takes far longer.
When you use both, what goes where
Fix one primary form and one secondary form, then decide only which one comes first in each place. If the order of the pair changes from document to document, the two names start reading as two different brands.
| Where it appears | Which form comes first | Why |
| Logo, packaging | Original | It has to look like the same product in any country |
| Product title on a sales page | Hangul, original beside it | The words people read and search with are Hangul |
| Video and broadcast captions | Hangul | This is where the name is spoken |
| Contracts and registration papers | Original, full registered form | Documents have to match the registered characters |
| Social accounts | Handle in the original, display name in Hangul | Handles are hard to change; display names are not |
| Web address | Original | An address field is safer written in Latin letters |
Within one screen, print both forms only the first time. After that use the primary form alone. Attaching both every time makes product-title fields cut off and headings lose their endings.
What do you check before deciding, and in what order
Five steps. Change the order and something gets overturned later.
| Step | What you check | Where, and who to ask |
| 1 | Whether a Hangul spelling is already in use | Look for the name on search portals, sales pages and articles |
| 2 | How people actually read it | Show the original name to 10 Korean speakers and write down what they say |
| 3 | Whether it reads as something else | Have native Korean speakers read the candidates aloud |
| 4 | Whether it can be used as a trademark | Search the public trademark database, then confirm with a licensed patent attorney |
| 5 | Whether it fits the character limits | Type it into each channel's business-name and product-name fields |
Step 4 is not yours to judge. Finding similar names in a search and being able to register are two different questions, and the second is answered by someone licensed to represent trademarks. Narrowing to 3 candidates and handing them over with your search results makes that confirmation faster. Steps 1 to 3 take about three days; step 4 adds waiting time for a reply.
What to do today
Write your original brand name large on one sheet of paper, show it to 10 Korean speakers, and have them write down in Hangul what they hear. It takes 30 minutes. Today's result is how many spellings come back and which one appears most. If they converge on one, that is your primary form; if they split three ways or more, review building a name from the meaning alongside transcribing the sound.
