Italian names in Korean 이탈리아어 이름

Why Giovanni is 조반니

gi followed by o is 조 (Section 5, rule 5), and a double n stays ㄴㄴ (rule 4), so Giovanni is 조반니. The same rules give Giorgio 조르조.

Common Italian first names

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

Italian 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 Italian names are written in Korean

Italian names are written with Table 3 (표 3), which gives a Korean letter for each Italian letter, and the seven special rules in Chapter 3, Section 5 (제3장 제5절 이탈리아어의 표기). The special rules, with the official examples:

1. gl — Before i, gl is ㄹㄹ; elsewhere it is 글ㄹ. Official examples: paglia 팔리아, egli 엘리, gloria 글로리아.
2. gn — gn joins the next vowel as 냐, 녜, 뇨, 뉴, 니. Official examples: montagna 몬타냐, gnocco 뇨코, ogni 오니.
3. sc — sce is 셰, sci is 시, and any other sc is 스ㅋ. Official examples: crescendo 크레셴도, scivolo 시볼로, Tosca 토스카.
4. Double consonants — A doubled consonant is written like a single one — except -mm- and -nn-, which stay ㅁㅁ and ㄴㄴ. Official examples: Puccini 푸치니, allegretto 알레그레토, gomma 곰마, bisnonno 비스논노.
5. c and g — Before e and i, c and g are ㅊ and ㅈ. Followed by ia, io, iu they are 차, 초, 추 and 자, 조, 주. Official examples: cima 치마, gita 지타, caccia 카차, giardino 자르디노, giorno 조르노.
6. qu — qu joins the next vowel as 콰, 퀘, 퀴; before o it is 쿠. Official examples: quello 퀠로, quieto 퀴에토, quota 쿠오타.
7. l, ll — At the end of a word or before a consonant they are a final ㄹ; inside a word before a vowel they are ㄹㄹ. Official examples: sol 솔, Carlo 카를로, quello 퀠로.

Letters to know

From 표 3, the table of Italian letters:

Source: 외래어 표기법 (Rules for writing foreign words in Korean), National Institute of Korean Language — 제3장 제5절 and 표 3. Names and counts: the institute’s 외래어 표기 용례 records of people, as published on korean.go.kr (read October 2026).

Italian-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.

More languages

Spanish · French · German · Italian · Portuguese · Dutch · How Korean spells English names · Names A–Z