Spanish names in Korean 에스파냐어 이름

Why José is 호세 but Joseph is 조지프

Each name is written the way it sounds in its own language. The Spanish j is written ㅎ (Table 2: jueves 후에베스), so José is 호세. The English Joseph follows the English rules and becomes 조지프. Portuguese writes j as ㅈ (Table 17) and an s between vowels as ㅈ (Section 19, rule 9), so the Portuguese José is 조제.

Common Spanish first names

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

Spanish 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 Spanish names are written in Korean

Spanish names are written with Table 2 (표 2), which gives a Korean letter for each Spanish letter, and the six special rules in Chapter 3, Section 4 (제3장 제4절 에스파냐어의 표기). The special rules, with the official examples:

1. gu, qu — Before i and e, gu and qu are written ㄱ and ㅋ; before o they are 구 and 쿠; before a they join the a as 과 and 콰. Official examples: guerra 게라, queso 케소, antiguo 안티구오, Nicaragua 니카라과.
2. Double consonants — A doubled consonant is written like a single one — except -cc-, which is ㄱㅅ. Official examples: carrera 카레라, accion 악시온.
3. c and g — Before e and i, c is ㅅ and g is ㅎ; everywhere else they are ㅋ and ㄱ. Official examples: Cecilia 세실리아, giganta 히간타, gato 가토.
4. x — Before a vowel, x is ㅅ at the start of a word and ㄱㅅ inside a word. Official examples: xilofono 실로포노, laxante 락산테.
5. l — At the end of a word or before a consonant, l is a final ㄹ; inside a word before a vowel it is doubled, ㄹㄹ. Official examples: ocal 오칼, colcren 콜크렌, Cecilia 세실리아.
6. n before c, g — An n before c or g becomes the final ㅇ. Official examples: blanco 블랑코, yungla 융글라.

Letters to know

From 표 2, the table of Spanish letters:

Source: 외래어 표기법 (Rules for writing foreign words in Korean), National Institute of Korean Language — 제3장 제4절 and 표 2. Names and counts: the institute’s 외래어 표기 용례 records of people, as published on korean.go.kr (read October 2026).

Spanish-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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