• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.97-111
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• 2004

To study the clothing names has been one of the research subjects in the history of clothing since the name could be the basic tool to understand the clothing. In the past, the name of clothing were used in Chinese character which is hieroglyphic. Each character of Chinese has special meaning. They had been changed into Korean after Korean characters were invented. During the period when they were changed into Korean, some of them retained the original meaning while others widened the original meaning. Some of them even translated into totally different meaning. Accordingly, it could be a clue to survey the changing process of Chinese names into Korean by analysing the vocabulary in the books published in Choseon dynasty. In this study, the first step is to survey the children's Chinese vocabulary learning material, Hunmongahoe(1527), Sinzeungliuhap(1576) and Ahackpyun(1804). These books were widely used from 16 to 19 centuries. It has been surveyed how the meaning of clothes names has changed and the special features of changed names. The names appeared in these Chinese vocabulary learning books included headgear, footwear, dress, part names of dress, ornaments, color and names of textile. The followings are observed by studying the names appeared in more than two books above： 1. The same Chinese character were translated differently. 2. Recently the meaning of Chinese character has been reduced or changed into new Chinese character. 3. Some of them retained the same meaning but used different character. It has been observed that some clothing names retained the original meaning but others changed the meaning, or translated into different names. It shows that the appropriate meaning of names should be properly selected when we study the history of clothing.