DrStraw wrote:Are there any guidelines for interpreting gender for Korean names? I know that there are some in Japanese (-ko, for example).
Korean names are typically based on Chinese character. In most cases, the given name consists of two Chinese characters, whereas the first character is for the family name. For this reason, many Korean names are three syllables (though, there are exceptions). As you may be familiar since it's similar with Japanese, multiple Chinese characters can have the same pronunciation. For that reason, it's possible to have a "masculine" Chinese character that sounds the same as a "feminine" Chinese character, so you can end up having males and females with the same name.
However, as in the case of Japanese, there are some common sounds that are typically found in female names, and also common ones found in male names. Your example of "-ko" also works in Korean. As in Japanese, 子 is a common character in female names. In Japanese, you pronounce this as "ko", and in Korean, you pronounce as "ja". Therefore, you'll often see female names having "ja" as one of the syllables.
Common male sounds are:
Joon
Hyun
Jae
Ho
Hoon
To give some examples, "浩" is pronounced as "ho", and can mean "leader". It's associated with a male name. Of course, there can be other Chinese characters pronounced as "ho", too. One example of "hoon" could be "勳", which can mean "achievement" (though, this isn't the same "hoon" that Cho Hunhyun uses - he uses 薰). Just because it sounds like "ho" or "hoon" doesn't mean that they're using these characters - these are just some common ones.
Common female sounds are:
Ja
Hee
Eun
Mi
Yeon
Sook
Some examples of the sounds above are "恩" (eun) which means "grace", "美" (mi) which means "beauty", "姸" (yeon) which means pretty, "淑" (sook) which means "clean" or "meek".
Some characters, such as "智" (knowledge), are popular for both genders. In Korean, this is pronounced as "Ji", so it's common to see the sound for both genders. To give another example, my wife's name is "Hyun-jin", which is commonly a female name, but there are also males having the same name (eg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyun_Jin_Moon).
So, you can follow these guidelines for predicting gender, but there are no absolute rules on sounds, especially since the underlying Chinese character can be different for the same sound.
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Note: Cho Hye-yeon uses "惠連" for "hye-yeon". "惠" means blessing/grace/kindness, and "連" means to connect/join/take-along. So, I would imagine that at least the "hye" (惠) has a feminine connotation.
