Following the news events in Korea I was struck by how the surnames all generally seem to be monosyllabic (Han, Yoon, Kim etc), and the personal names mostly to be monosyllabic, or two syllables separated by a hyphen.
Is this an accurate observation? If do, how come ? What is it about Korean that produced this pattern?
Korean and Chinese share a great deal of similarity in this regard - there’s not really a good “reason” other than that that’s just what became standard as the Chinese-Korean common shared linguistics - it basically became default.
Both languages involve family names that are almost always just one syllable (Chinese: Lee, Wang, Ling, Huang, Chen, etc. - Korean: Park, Lee, Kim, etc.) and a given name that is one or two syllables (Chinese: Xi Jin Ping, Wen Jia Bao, Lee Teng Hui, etc. - Korean: Lee Myung Bak, Park Geun-Hye, Lee Wong Jae, etc). Occasionally you’ll see an exception like “Ouyang” in Chinese as a surname, but those are rare.
My WAG is that it simply became the tidiest method. Since they are both character-based languages, and one character = one syllable usually, then the family name is monosyllabic, but a two-syllable given name generally allows for more variety and creativity and also prevent misidentification. Anything beyond 3 syllables becomes perceived as too lengthy.
Korean family names are historically based around a clan, which would generally be represented in Hanja (the traditional Chinese-based written language). So, predominantly, but not exclusively, single syllable as the surname would be a single character. Note that even having a surname is relatively new. Until the early 20th century, it was primarily the nobility who had them, so the majority of Koreans did not have one and when they were allowed to take one, tended to adopt those used by royalty/nobility. Note, because names are based on Hanja, it can be difficult to determine if two people are in the same clan if the names simply sound the same but use different characters. There are several dozen ‘Kim’ clans, for example. There’s only one ‘Moon’ clan though.
Likewise, due to tradition (originally from China), given names were historically two part (each also based around the traditional script), one part shared by all members of the same generation in a family and the other part a unique given name for the person. This is less strictly true than in the past but still widely practiced, in both the North and South.
For example, the current leader of North Korea is Kim Jong-Un. His older brother is Kim Jong-Chul and his sister is Kim Yo-Jong. So, clearly ‘Jong’ is the generational component that all children of their clan in their generation would share while the other part is unique to each of them.
Their grandfather was Kim Il-Sung was actually born Kim Song-Ju, with brothers Kim Chul-Ju and Kim Yong-Ju, so their generational given name was Ju. Note that the position (first or last for the generational component) can vary by generation and clan custom.
For what it’s worth (not much), the Korean-Canadians I have met with two-syllable given names haven’t hyphenated them.
Written Korean is not a character-based language; it employs an alphabet.
Back to the OP, Wiktionary has a nifty list of Korean surnames in Hangul alphabetical order. I counted 13 two-syllable names out of 196 surnames.
And Wikipedia has a good explanation of Chinese surnames here.
Actually, there is a very good reason for short names in Asia.
Since spoken language precedes written language, I would think the writing system is character based (hanja) because the spoken words are (mainly) mono-syllabic, not the other way around.
That’s too broad a statement. “Asia” includes countries like Indonesia, where “Notowidigdo” or “Dwidjomartono” are perfectly ordinary Javanese names; “Chulalongkorn” comes to mind right away as a Thai name.
I can’t vouch for Korean, but Chinese is (very) broadly speaking monosyllabic, with a whole range of tones distinguishing potential homophones.
And as @CairoCarol noted, a lot of Asian languages are definitely not monosyllabic.
It’s only monosyllabic if you ignore the actual construction of words which is usually polysyllabic.
Each character is monosyllabic but most often words are composed of two characters, and some with three or more.
For example, the Chinese word for teacher is 老師
(traditional characters) lǎo shī. While each character has independent meanings, old and master, if you want “teacher” you need both characters put together.
I can still pronounce hangul when I see it as it is phonetic.
And I remember a joke about Korean names, from Korea. They say if you go to the top of a hill and toss a rock down it will hit a Kim, a Pak, or a Lee. Of course those are the Western spellings of the name, and not quite how they are pronounced in Korean. The use sounds we do not, and vice versa.