Instead of the family being a unit, as in the west, it is only the fragment of a clan, a segment in the great circle of kindred. The number of terms expressing relationship is vastly greater and much more complex than in English. One is amazed at the exuberance of the national vocabulary in this respect. The Coreans are fully as clannish as the Chinese, and much more so than the Irish; and in this, as in the Middle Kingdom, lies one great obstacle to Christianity or to any kind of individual reform. Marriage cannot take place between two persons having the same family cognomen. There are in the kingdom only one hundred and forty or fifty family, or rather clan names. Yet many of these names are widespread through the realm. All are formed of a single Chinese letter, except six or seven, which are composed of two characters. To distinguish the different families who bear the same patronymic, they add the name which they call the pu, or Gentile name, to indicate the place whence the family originally came. In the case of two persons wishing to marry, if this pu is the same, they are in the eyes of the law relatives, and marriage is forbidden. If the pu of each is different, they may wed. The most common names, such as Kim and Ni—answering to our Smith and Jones—have more than a score of pu, which arise from more than twenty families, the place of whose origin is in each case different. The family name is never used alone. It is always followed by a surname; or only the word so-pang, junior, sang-wen, senior, lord, sir, etc.
Male adults usually have three personal names, that given in childhood, the common proper name, and the common legal name, while to this last is often added the title. Besides these, various aliases, nicknames, fanciful and punning appellatives, play their part, to the pleasure or vexation of their object. This custom is the source of endless confusion in documents and common life. It was formerly in vogue in Japan, but was abolished by the mikado’s government in 1872, and now spares as much trouble to tongue, types, and pens, as a reform in our alphabet and spelling would save the English-speaking world. As in Nippon, a Corean female has but one name from the cradle to the grave. The titles “Madame,” or “Madame widow,” are added in mature life. As in old Japan, the common people do not, as a rule, have distinguishing individual names, and among them nicknames are very common. Corean etiquette forbids that the name of father, mother, or uncle be used in conversation, or even pronounced aloud. [[262]]
[1] See “The Meeting of the Star Lovers,” in Japanese Fairy World. [↑]
CHAPTER XXX.
HOUSEKEEPING, DIET, AND COSTUME.
Corean architecture is in a very primitive condition. The castles, fortifications, temples, monasteries and public buildings cannot approach in magnificence those of Japan or China. The country, though boasting hoary antiquity, has few ruins in stone. The dwellings are tiled or thatched houses, almost invariably one story high. In the smaller towns these are not arranged in regular streets, but scattered here and there. Even in the cities and capital the streets are narrow and tortuous.
In the rural parts, the houses of the wealthy are embosomed in beautiful groves, with gardens surrounded by charming hedges or fences of rushes or split-bamboo. The cities show a greater display of red-tiled roofs, as only the officials and nobles are allowed this sumptuary honor. Shingles are not much used. The thatching is of rice or barley straw, cut close, with ample eaves, and often finished with great neatness.
A low wall of uncemented stone, five or six feet high, surrounds the dwelling, and when kept in repair gives an air of neatness and imposing solidity to the estate. Often a pretty rampart of flat bamboo or rushes, plaited in the herring-bone pattern, surmounts the wall, which may be of pebbles or stratified rock and mortared. Sometimes the rampart is of wattle, covered with smooth white plaster, which, with the gateway, is also surmounted by an arched roofing of tiles. Instead of regular slanting lines of gables, one meets with the curved and pagoda-like roofs seen in China, with a heavy central ridge and projecting ornaments of fire-hardened clay, like the “stirrup” or “devil” tiles of Japan. These curves greatly add to the beauty of a Corean house, because they break the monotony of the lines of Corean architecture.