The current system that limits the Chinese characters parents can use in their children's names to about 9,000 does not violate the Constitution, a ruling found. With the scope of the freedom to name at issue, the Constitutional Court viewed it as a reasonable restriction considering administrative stability and public convenience.
The Constitutional Court said on the 3rd that on the 29th it found Article 44, Paragraph 3 of the Act on Registration of Family Relations constitutional in a constitutional complaint filed by a person surnamed Kim, in a 5-4 decision by the justices. The provision allows only Hangul or "commonly used Chinese characters" to be used in children's names. Here, commonly used Chinese characters refer to "Chinese characters for personal names" as defined by Supreme Court rules.
The case arose during the birth registration process. The petitioner, Kim, tried to use "rae meaning pretty (婡)" in a child's name born in Feb. 2023, but was told at a community service center that the character could not be used because it was not included in the list of Chinese characters for personal names. Kim ultimately abandoned the Chinese character notation and registered the name in Hangul only, and filed a constitutional complaint arguing that the rule restricting the characters usable in names infringes on parents' fundamental rights.
Under current rules, only Chinese characters for personal names as set by Supreme Court rules may be entered in the family relations register. The number of usable characters is now 9,389 in total, including basic educational characters and their variant, cursive, and simplified forms. This exceeds China (about 3,500) and Japan (2,999), but is limited compared with the roughly 60,000 total Chinese characters.
The court found that this restriction is not excessive. The bench said, "Children's names recorded in the family relations register need to be registered in characters that members of our society actually read and use," adding, "To register a Chinese-character name in the computerized family relations system, it is necessary to predefine the scope of 'commonly used Chinese characters.'"
It added, "The scope of Chinese characters for personal names has been continuously expanded, and there are remedies that allow the use of newly added characters through a name change or subsequent supplemental filing." In fact, the roster grew from 2,731 characters when the system was introduced in 1990 to 9,389 today.
By contrast, four justices—Jeong Jeong-mi, Kim Bok-hyeong, Ma Eun-hyeok, and Oh Young-joon—dissented. They said, "Parents giving a child a name is not only part of the child's formation of personality, but also the starting point of accepting the child as a member of the family community," adding, "Parents, as a rule, have the right to freely use the Chinese characters they want in a child's name, so long as it does not run counter to the child's welfare."
They added, "At a time when it is exceedingly rare for the Chinese characters of a personal name to be used alone to identify a person's identity, it is hard to see how prohibiting the registration of difficult characters in names greatly contributes to enhancing public convenience or forming stable legal relations."