Jeong-ja


Jeong-ja, also spelled Jung-ja, Jong-ja, or Chung-ja, is a Korean feminine given name. The meaning differs based on the hanja used to write each syllable of the name.

Hanja and meaning

There are 65 hanja with the reading "jeong" and 28 hanja with the reading "ja" on the South Korean government's official list of hanja which may be used in given names. Typically, "ja" is written with the hanja meaning "child". In Japan, where this character is read ko, it was originally used as suffix for the names of girls in the aristocracy. The practice of adding -ko to girls' names spread to the lower classes following the 1868 Meiji Restoration. Jeong-ja is one of a number of Japanese-style names ending in "ja", along with Young-ja and Soon-ja, that were popular when Korea was under Japanese rule from 1910 to 1945, but declined in popularity afterwards. According to South Korean government data, it was the sixth-most popular name for baby girls in 1940. By 1950 there were no names ending in "ja" in the top ten.
Some ways of writing this name in hanja include:
People with this name include: