What's Your Name in Korean: 이름이 뭐예요? and the Etiquette Around It

"What's your name?" in Korean is 이름이 뭐예요? (i-reum-i mwo-ye-yo), the standard polite version for peers or juniors. To someone older or in a formal setting, use the honorific 성함이 어떻게 되세요? (seong-ham-i eo-tteo-ke doe-se-yo). Answer with 저는 [name]이에요/예요 (jeo-neun ___ i-e-yo/ye-yo) — 이에요 if the name ends in a consonant sound, 예요 if it ends in a vowel.

Here's the trap: you learn 이름이 뭐예요?, ask it to the wrong person, and get a polite but slightly startled pause. Korean has two "what's your name" — one for people your rank or younger, one for people you should be bowing to a little. Mixing them up isn't a grammar error, it's a social one.

Below is the ladder, the answer pattern with its one sneaky sound rule, and the part nobody's textbook warns you about: once someone in Korea learns your name, they will almost immediately stop using it.

The name-asking ladder

Notice 성함이 어떻게 되세요? doesn't literally say "what," it says "how does your name come to be" — a softer, more indirect construction than 뭐예요?, which is exactly what makes it feel more respectful. Korean politeness runs on indirectness as much as on vocabulary.

Answering: 저는 ___이에요/예요

The pattern is 저는 [name] + 이에요 or 예요 — "I am ___." Which ending you use isn't random, it's decided by the very last sound of the name: does it end in a consonant (받침, batchim) or a vowel?

Foreign names are where this trips people up. "Mark" sounds consonant-ending to an English ear, but the Korean transliteration is 마크 — and 크 ends in the vowel ㅡ, not a consonant, so it's 마크예요, not 마크이에요. The rule only cares about the last Korean syllable actually written down, never the English spelling. If your name gets transliterated, check the exact syllables first — the batchim call depends entirely on that.

Why nobody keeps using your name after this

This is the part that surprises learners most: Korean adults use first names on their own shockingly rarely. Once your name is established, it gets swapped almost immediately for something else — 씨 attached to the name (지훈 씨), an age-based term like 오빠/누나/형/언니, or a role: 팀장님, 선생님, 사장님. Bare first names, unadorned, are reserved for people clearly younger than you or close childhood friends.

Full names — 성 (surname) plus given name together, spoken with zero honorific — carry an entirely different charge. Parents use it to signal a child is in trouble (three flat syllables, no warmth). Teachers use it for roll call and scolding. In a K-drama, a character snapping someone's full name mid-argument is the writers' shorthand for "this just got serious." It's not that full names are impolite exactly — they're simply too bare, stripped of the relationship markers Korean speech normally leans on.

The question that comes right after: your age

Ask a Korean stranger their name and, within a sentence or two, expect 나이가 어떻게 되세요? ("how old are you?") or 몇 년생이세요? ("what year were you born?"). This isn't small talk curiosity — it's grammar reconnaissance. Korean speech level, and which kinship term someone earns (형/오빠 vs 동생), is set by relative age. Your new acquaintance genuinely cannot finish calibrating how to speak to you until they know whether they're older or younger.

If the question catches you off guard, you have options that don't require full honesty about your birth year: give it, deflect lightly with "제가 좀 많아요" ("I'm a bit older") if you'd rather not specify, or just answer straight — most people ask because they need the information, not to judge you. Worth knowing before you answer: Korean age math changed by law in 2023, so the number you give now is your international age, not the old Korean counting system.