[KS] By train from Seoul to Incheon--what's in a name?

Joshua Margolis josh at joshuamargolis.com
Wed Jan 25 09:42:57 EST 2006


In response to Stefan's query, I note that Horace Underwood referred to
"Seoul" (written with an umlaut over the 'e') in the preface to his "An
Introduction to the Korean Spoken Language" dated November 1889.

Interestingly (at least to me), when I started reading this post and saw
that Stefan was going to ask about anachronistic use of the name "Kyo^ngin",
I initially thought he was going to ask about the "in" part, not "kyo^ng".
Assuming "in" does in fact refer to Inch'o^n, wouldn't this be problematic
since the city was still called Chemulp'o in the late 1800's? When did the
name Inch'o^n come into use?

Josh






More information about the Koreanstudies mailing list