Abstract

This study aims to classify the names of things and the measure nouns of Korean old vernacular letters in Joseon Dynasty and to examine their features. Royal vernacular letters refer to letters of which sender or receiver is a member of royal family such as the king, the queen, the princess or the court lady. They are divisible with those of the literati. This study searches the characteristics of royal vernacular letters in the names of things and the measure nouns in contrast with literati’s vernacular letters. Firstly, we set bounds to the nature of the materials and the subject of the study, and next, classified the names of things and the measure nouns in the 429 royal vernacular letters according to their meanings. In this process we were able to understand the features of the royal vernacular letters through the tendency of the names of things and the measure nouns. The names of things in the royal vernacular letters fell into four categories: clothing, food, shelter, and others. Names of ritual costumes were on the clothing category, names of medicine were major on the food category. Names of palaces appeared on the category of shelter. Names of stationary, novels and daily supplies were in other category. In measure nouns appeared of the royal vernacular letters, there were ‘Pil’ and ‘Tong’ as units of length; ‘Sheok’ and ‘Seung’ as units of volume; ‘Nyang’ and ‘Geun’ as units of weight; ‘Jyeop/dyeop, Tyeop, Sok, Geup’ as units of bundles, ‘ᄀᆡ,’ ‘ᄆᆡ,’ ‘Mi,’ ‘Shu,’ ‘Nip,’ ‘Young’ and ‘Bu’ as units of numbers, These were all Chinese characters, and it was the distinction against the Literati’s letters. The name of a thing in royal vernacular letters is the field of study which requires a comprehensive research along with the name of a thing in costumes or food such as Uigwe and Balgi, and that of old literatures, novels, and wills. The name of a thing in the Literati’s letters should be examined together. Building a database of the name of a thing is essential to systematize it. We expect further study on the name of a thing based on this kind of comprehensive work.