Lee (Korean surname)

Lee is the typical romanization of the common South Korean surname I (Hangul 이), North Korean surname Ri (리). The name is written identically to the Chinese name Li 李 in Hanja characters. It is the second-most-common surname in Korea, behind only Kim.

Pronunciation and Latin-alphabet spelling

Though the official Revised Romanization spelling of this surname is I, South Korea's National Institute of the Korean Language noted in 2001 that one-letter surnames were quite rare in English and other foreign languages and could cause difficulties when traveling abroad. However, the NIKL still hoped to promote systemic transcriptions for use in passports, and thus recommended that people who bore this surname should spell it Yi in the Roman alphabet.

The overwhelming majority of South Koreans with this surname ignored this recommendation and continue to spell it as Lee. In a study based on 2007 application data for South Korean passports, it was found that 98.5% of people with this surname spelled it in Latin letters as Lee in their passports, while only 1.0% spelled it Yi.

Korean

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Koreans

The Koreans (Hangul: 한민족; hanja: 韓民族; alternatively Hangul: 조선민족; hanja: 朝鮮民族, see names of Korea) are a historic people based in the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria. In the last century and a half, the 7 million people of the Korean diaspora have spread along the Pacific Rim, especially to China, United States and Japan.

Etymology

South Koreans refer to themselves as Hanguk-in (Hangul: 한국인; hanja: 韓國人), or Hanguk-saram (Hangul: 한국 사람), both of which mean "Korean country people." When referring to members of the Korean diaspora, Koreans often use the term Han-in (Hangul: 한인; hanja: 韓人; literally "Korean people").

North Koreans refer to themselves as Joseon-in (Hangul: 조선인; hanja: 朝鮮人) or Joseon-saram (Hangul: 조선 사람), both of which literally mean "Joseon people". Using similar words, Koreans in China refer to themselves as Chaoxianzu (Chinese: 朝鲜族) in Chinese or Joseonjok (Hangul: 조선족) in Korean, which are cognates that literally mean "Joseon ethnic group".

Ethnic Koreans living in Russia and Central Asia refer to themselves as Koryo-saram (Hangul: 고려 사람; Cyrillic script: Корё сарам), alluding to Goryeo, a Korean dynasty spanning from 918 to 1392.

Korean Air Flight 801

Korean Air Flight 801 (KE801, KAL801) crashed on August 6, 1997, on approach to Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport, in the United States territory of Guam, killing 228 of the 254 people aboard.

Flight 801 was normally flown by an Airbus A300; since Korean Air had scheduled the August 5–6 flight to transport Guamanian athletes to the South Pacific Mini Games in American Samoa, the airline designated HL7468, a 12-year-old Boeing 747-300 delivered to Korean Air on December 12, 1984, to fly the route that night. The aircraft crashed on Nimitz Hill in Asan, Guam while on approach to the airport.

Disaster

Flight 801 departed from Seoul-Kimpo International Airport (now Gimpo Airport) at 8:53 p.m. (9:53 p.m. Guam time) on August 5 on its way to Guam. It carried two pilots, a flight engineer, 14 flight attendants, and 237 passengers, a total of 254 people. Of the passengers, three were children between the ages of 2 and 12 and three were 24 months old or younger. Six of the passengers were Korean Air flight attendants who were deadheading.

Lee

Lee may refer to:

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Given name

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United States of America

Li (surname 李)

Li (Chinese: 李; pinyin: Lǐ) is the second most common surname in China, behind only Wang. It is also one of the most common surnames in the world, shared by 93 million people in China, and more than 100 million worldwide. It is the fourth name listed in the Song dynasty classic text Hundred Family Surnames. According to the Sixth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China, Li takes back the number one surname in China with a population of 95,300,000 (7.94％).

The name is pronounced as "Lei" in Cantonese, but is often spelled as Lee in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and many other overseas Chinese communities. In Macau, it is also spelled as Lei. In Indonesia it is commonly spelled as Lie.

The common Korean surname, Lee (also romanized as Yi, Ri, or Rhee), and the Vietnamese surname, Lý, are both derived from Li and are historically written with the same Chinese character, 李. The character also means "plum" or "plum tree".

According to tradition, the Li surname originated from the title Dali held by Gao Yao, a legendary minister of the Xia dynasty, and was originally written with the different character, 理. Laozi (Li Er), the founder of Taoism, was the first historical person known to have the surname and is regarded as the founding ancestor of the surname.

Lee (English given name)

Lee is a given name derived from the English surname Lee (which is ultimately from a placename derived from Old English leah "clearing; meadow"). As the surname of Robert E. Lee (1807-1870), the name became popular in the American South after the Civil War, its popularity peaking in 1900 at rank 39 as a masculine name, and in 1955 at rank 182 as a feminine name. The name's popularity declined steadily in the second half of the 20th century, falling below rank 1000 by 1991 as a feminine name, and to 666 as of 2012 as a masculine name. In the later 20th century, it also gained some popularity in the United Kingdom, peaking among the 20 most popular boys' names during the 1970s to 1980s, but it had fallen out of the top 100 by 2001.

Lee is also a hypocoristic form of the given names Ashley, Beverly, Kimberley, and Leslie (all of which are also derived from English placenames containing -leah as a second element; with the possible exception of Leslie, which may be an anglicization of a Gaelic placename).