Sōshi-kaimei

Sōshi-kaimei
Announcement of the Sōshi-kaimei policy issued by the Taikyu court, written bilingually in Japanese and Korean, in a special parallel style in which hanja/kanji were printed only once and were "shared" by the hangul and kana texts
Korean name
Hangul	창씨개명
Hanja
Revised Romanization	Changssi-gaemyeong
McCune–Reischauer	Ch'angssi-kaemyŏng
Literal meaning: "Create a surname (shi) and change (your) given name).

Sōshi-kaimei (創氏改名) was a policy of pressuring Koreans under Japanese rule to adopt Japanese names. It consisted of two parts. Ordinance No. 19, issued in 1939, required sōshi, literally "creation of a family name" (氏, shi); unlike Japan, Korea had not adopted the Western practice of universally using family names (see Bon-gwan (姓, sei)). Ordinance No. 20, issued in 1940, permitted kaimei, change of one's given name; this was voluntary and the applicant was charged a fee.

These ordinances, issued by General Jirō Minami, Governor-General of Korea, effectively reversed an earlier government order which forbade Koreans to take up Japanese names. There are various explanations for the purpose of the ordinances.

In 1909, the Korean Empire established a civil registration law, starting the creation of a modern family registry system. With regard to the recording of details about women such as the father's surname, age, and connection to the registry holder, due to attention that needed to be given to avoiding conflict with Korean customs, the drafting of the law was not completed until April 1910, just before the annexation of Korea. By that time, a portion of Koreans had already registered Japanese-style names and the like, which generated confusion. As a result, on the basis of memoranda such as Order No. 124, "Document regarding name changes by Koreans" issued by the Governor-General of Korea on November 11, 1911, the use by Koreans of "names which might be mistaken for those of native Japanese" was no longer permitted, and strict controls were placed on the registration of Japanese-style names for newborn children. Additionally, Koreans who had registered Japanese-style names on there were required to revert to their original names.

In 1939 and 1940, a new name-change policy came into effect by means of Ordinances No. 19 and 20. Originally, as in Taiwan, the new name-change policy was intended simply to allow change of surname (sei/seong) and given name, but because Korea had a long-established custom (recently abandoned) whereby people of the same bon-gwan (surname and clan) were not allowed to marry each other, in order that this custom could continue, it was decided that the policy would be implemented by leaving the clan name and sei the same in the family register, while permitting a new family name (shi/ssi) to be registered. On the other hand, in Taiwan, which was also under Japanese rule in the same period, but did not have an analogous custom, the policy was not described as "creation of a shi", but was simply "change of sei and given name" (改姓名).