Korea

Meaning

Proper Noun

• nation East Asia (region). Since World War II, Korea has been divided into two sovereign states, commonly called South Korea and North Korea in the US, or Korea and North Korea in the UK.
• The Republic of Korea (South Korea).
• The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea).
• The Korean Peninsula.

Origin

• First attested as Core in the 1598 English translation of the 1596 Itinerario of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, from the original Dutch Core, itself from Portuguese according to van Linschoten's account.
• , an ancient Korean kingdom in the first millennium. Goryeo, directly from Korean.
• The earliest form in Europe was probably William of Rubruck's Medieval Latin Caule (clearly from Early Mandarin), but this is not ancestral to the modern European names. Some Korean authors claim an Arabic intermediary instead, but the actual medieval Arabic word for Korea was a variant of السيلى.
• The spelling Corea was more common in Early Modern English.