명
surname · Hangul script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 1 country · latest register: KOSIS 2015 Census, 2015
명 is a surname written in the Hangul script, with more bearers in South Korea than in any other country, where it is the 93rd most common given name. Recorded meaning: Sino-Korean word from 名, from the Middle Korean reading 며ᇰ (Yale: myèng).
- KRSouth Korea≈1 in 640as 명희(inferred from the name graph)
- KPNorth Korea≈1 in 1.4Kas Myung
- PKPakistan≈1 in 18Kfew recordsas Myung
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than 명 itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- South Korea (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 215 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 640 (inferred from the name graph)
≈81,000 named 명희, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
South Korea, est., as 명희
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)9 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Myung in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada and 1 more and 명희 in KR South Korea.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Sino-Korean word from 名, from the Middle Korean reading 며ᇰ (Yale: myèng).
Cited for this meaning 1
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)명 counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR South Korea | #93 | ≈81,000 est. | ≈1 in 640 | 29K | 명희 | 165 |
| KP North Korea | — | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | 3 | — | 14 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Myung | 2 |
| US United States | — | 4,256as Myung | 1 in 78K | 3.1K | Myung | 215 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈610 est. | ≈1 in 114K | — | Myung | 36 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈570 est. | ≈1 in 72K | — | Myung | 39 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)6 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 1 country.
Reference works 3
- KOSIS Korea 2015 census surnames + clans (bon'gwan)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name 명 mean, and where does it come from?
- Sino-Korean word from 名, from the Middle Korean reading 며ᇰ (Yale: myèng). Recorded by Wiktionary.
- In which country does 명 have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 81 thousand people named 명희 in South Korea, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name 명?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,256 people named Myung in 2020, about 1 in 78 thousand residents.
- How common is 명 compared with other names?
- In South Korea, 명 is the 93rd most common given name of 67,037 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about 명?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%EB%AA%85The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “명” — the 93rd most common given name in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.