An Examination of Chinese Character Transcriptions of Jurchen and Manchu Personal Names as Reflected in the Annals of the Choson Dynasty

An Examination of Chinese Character Transcriptions of Jurchen and Manchu Personal Names as Reflected in the Annals of the Choson Dynasty

This study investigates transcriptions of Jurchen and Manchu personal names written in Chinese characters in the Annals of the Choson Dynasty (Sillok). Sillok recorded many Jurchen names through contact with Jurchens at the borderland and from the exchange of documents. This study’s primary focus, names recorded between the late 16 th century and early 17 th century, is to take advantage of the phonemic writing system of Manchu texts to elucidate the exact sounds. After comparing Sillok transcriptions to Manchu texts, the following results are revealed: (1) Chinese character transcriptions in Sillok are less accurate than Qing transcriptions in terms of correspondence to actual sounds. The most important reason for this discrepancy is the lack of Sino-Choson character readings containing sounds such as [f] and syllables such as [ba]. Another reason is the frequent omission of phonemes or syllables. To cope with this difficulty, transcriptions using the semantic value of Chinese characters (seok 釋 ) were sometimes utilized, but this method still had its limitations. (2) These transcriptions reveal aspects of the phonetic realization of Manchu. For example, /u, ū/ in words which contain yang vowels have similar phonetic values to Middle Korean /오, wo/; the place of articulation of Manchu /j, c/ is palatal; and certain phonological processes, such as breaking of /i/, can be observed. (3) Some phonological processes in Middle Korean, such as intervocalic h-deletion, are also reflected.