Sinchon or Sincheon? How Seoul subway station names are romanized

Seoul station signs show each name in Hangul and in Latin letters, and the Latin spelling follows the Revised Romanization of Korean, the national system adopted in 2000. It looks irregular until you know one thing: the vowel ㅗ is written o and the vowel ㅓ is written eo. That is the whole difference between Sinchon (신촌), the Line 2 station near the universities, and Sincheon (신천), the old name of the Line 2 station now called Jamsilsaenae. One vowel, two different parts of the city.

The vowels that trip people up

Of the 485 distinct station names on HelloSubway's Seoul lines, 155 contain "eo" (Seolleung, Nokbeon, Cheongnyangni), 39 contain "eu" (Madeul, Gubeundari) and 67 contain "ae" (Nakseongdae, Saetgang). The pattern is regular: ㅓ is eo, ㅡ is eu, ㅐ is ae, ㅜ is u and ㅗ is o. In our data the clearest pair is Samseong (삼성) on Line 2 and Samsong (삼송) on Line 3. In English the two names differ by a single letter e, and the stations are on opposite sides of the city.

The spelling follows the sound

The rule that surprises learners is that the romanization writes pronunciation, not letters. 독립문 is Dongnimmun because, when the name is spoken, the ㄱ turns into ng and the ㄹ and ㅂ turn into n and m. 신림 is Sillim and 선릉 is Seolleung, because ㄴ next to ㄹ is pronounced as a double l. 학여울 becomes Hangnyeoul and 왕십리 becomes Wangsimni for the same kind of reason. So the Latin name tells you how to say the station, even if it hides the Hangul behind it.

Hyphens and university names

Sixteen of the Seoul names contain a hyphen. Most come from administrative words, for example Sinseol-dong (신설동), Gangnam-gu Office (강남구청) and the numbered streets such as Jongno 3(sam)-ga. A few stations named after universities use the school's own spelling: the station for Konkuk University is written Konkuk, where the standard rules would give Geonguk. When the game asks for the English name, it asks for exactly the spelling shown on the screen.

What it means when you type

In Hangul the Latin spelling does not matter: 선릉 is six keystrokes either way. In English you are typing a spelling built from the sound, so the slow spots are the doubled consonants (Sillim, Hannam) and the eo and eu vowels. Sometimes the two scripts even out: Dongnimmun is 10 letters and 독립문 is 9 Hangul keystrokes, while Seolleung is 9 letters against 6. A habit that helps is to say the name aloud before typing it. For the Hangul side, read typing Korean station names, or ride Line 2, which has both Sinchon and Samseong.