Etymology

Seoul

S1E1O1U1L1

Today it means: The capital city of South Korea, also the historical capital of Korea from 1394 until the country was divided in 1945. Full definition →

French Séoul ← Korean 서울
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The story

  1. Korean · derived from서울
  2. French · borrowed fromSéoul
  3. English todaySeoul

From French Séoul, from Korean 서울 (Seoul, literally “capital city”), originally from Claude-Charles Dallet's French-based romanization of Korean, reinforced by the 1959 South Korean Ministry of Education romanization of Korean, which transcribed the Korean vowel ㅓ (/⁠ʌ⁠/) with the digraph "eo" and which was official until 1984. Note that English Seoul predates the Revised Romanization romanization of Seoul. The two romanization systems simply produce identical forms.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.