seung

Seung is a syllable used in Korean given names. In Hangul, it is written 승 and is typically romanized as Seung under the Revised Romanization of Korean. It is most commonly found as the first syllable in two-syllable masculine given names such as Seung-ho, Seung-woo, and Seung-hyun, though it can also appear in female names depending on the hanja chosen.

The meaning of Seung varies with the hanja used. There are multiple hanja readings for 승, including characters meaning victory (勝), rise or ascend (昇), or to undertake/receive (承), among others. Because hanja can be chosen freely for given names, Seung by itself does not have a single fixed meaning.

In modern Korea, Seung is predominantly masculine as a given-name syllable, but gender can vary with different combinations; the exact meaning arises from the chosen hanja.

The syllable can be written in English as Seung, and sometimes as Sung or Seoung in older texts. The McCune-Reischauer system would render it Sŭng. Outside Korea, Seung appears mainly in Korean diaspora contexts as part of given names; as a surname it is uncommon.

Notable people with Seung as a component of their given name include Seung-Hui Cho (born 1983), who carried out the Virginia Tech shooting, and Lee Seung-gi (born 1987), a prominent Korean singer and actor.