Your Pet's Korean Name

How Koreans name their pets

Food comes first. Kongi (little bean), Dubu (tofu), Gamja (potato), Choko, Hodu (walnut) — a name that sounds cute enough to eat is the national style.

Two syllables, ending in a vowel, is the sweet spot: short to call across a park, soft to the ear. A plain word often gets an -i added, so kong (bean) becomes Kongi.

When you call them, the name gets -ya or -a on the end: Boriya! Haneura! It's the same ending friends use for each other.

Old-school names like Badugi, Baekgu or Ppoppi sound like a grandparent's yard dog. Some people pick them on purpose for the retro charm.