German names in Korean 독일어 이름

Why Michael is 미하엘 in German

The ch in the German Michael is pronounced [ç], and Table 1 writes [ç] as ㅎ before a vowel — so it is 미하엘, while the English Michael is 마이클 and the Dutch one 미카엘. In the same way the German Peter is 페터, not the English 피터.

Common German first names

The German first names that appear most often in the records, with the spelling the institute uses.

German surnames

Most surnames appear only once or twice in the records. These are the ones recorded for more than one person, followed by the surnames of some well-known people.

The same name in other languages

A name keeps the sound it has in its own language, so names shared by several languages are spelled differently in Korean. All spellings below are from the official records; other-language spellings are shown when at least two people have them.

How German names are written in Korean

German names are written from their pronunciation with Table 1 (표 1, the International Phonetic Alphabet chart), using the English rules (제1절) where they fit, plus five special rules in Chapter 3, Section 2 (제3장 제2절 독일어의 표기). The special rules, with the official examples:

1. [r] — Before a consonant, r gets 으. At the end of a word, r and the ending -er are written 어. In compounds and derived words whose first part ends in r, the same rule applies to that part. Official examples: Hormon 호르몬, Hermes 헤르메스, Herr 헤어, Vater 파터, Schiller 실러, Vorbild 포어빌트.
2. Final p, t, k, b, d, g — A plosive at the end of a word gets 으, as a rule. Official examples: Rostock 로스토크, Stadt 슈타트.
3. berg, burg — The spellings berg and burg are always 베르크 and 부르크. Official examples: Heidelberg 하이델베르크, Hamburg 함부르크.
4. [ʃ] (sch) — At the end of a word or before a consonant it is 슈; before [y] and [ø] (ü, ö) it is ㅅ; before other vowels it joins them as 샤, 쇼, 슈 and so on. Official examples: Mensch 멘슈, Schüler 쉴러, schön 쇤, Schule 슐레.
5. äu, eu — When pronounced [ɔy], äu and eu are written 오이. Official examples: Europa 오이로파, Fräulein 프로일라인, Freundin 프로인딘.

Source: 외래어 표기법 (Rules for writing foreign words in Korean), National Institute of Korean Language — 제3장 제2절 and 표 1. Names and counts: the institute’s 외래어 표기 용례 records of people, as published on korean.go.kr (read October 2026).

German-speaking people in the records

A few of the people whose Korean spelling was decided by the government committee on foreign names (외래어 심의회). Foreign names keep their own order in Korean — given name first, then surname.

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