Seoul

Meaning

Proper Noun

• capital city South Korea (country), also the historical capital of Korea from 1394 until the country was forcibly divided in 1945.

Origin

• From Korean ^서울, 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 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.