ABSTRACT
Koreans have their own writing system called Hankul (referred to as Cosenkul in North Korea). The name Hankul was created in 1912 to replace the original name of the writing system, Enmun ‘Vulgar Writing’. The first part of the new name, han, is an archaic word meaning ‘great’ and the second part, kul, a native Korean word meaning ‘writing’. Thus the original meaning of Hankul is ‘Great Writing’. The meaning of the first word, however, has been lost to most Koreans and, with han being homophonous with another word associated with Korea or Koreans, as in Hankwuk ‘Korea’, the name Hankul is now generally understood to mean ‘Korean Writing’.
