Why do Koreans and Chinese both call themselves “Han”?

Two things since this video is getting popular: First, yes, I know that Samhan originally referred to Mahan, Jinhan, and Byeonhan. However, it was also historically used to describe the three kingdoms of Korea (Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla), and it was with this meaning that Korea changed its under from "Joseon" to "Daehan" under Gojong. 삼한은 원래 마한, 진한, 변한을 아울러 이르는 말이라는 것을 압니다. 하지만 삼국 후기부터 고구려, 신라, 백제도 의미 했습니다. 고종이 나라 이름을 대한으로 정했을 때 삼국 고구려, 신라, 백제를 의미하여 한 것입니다. Second, I wanted to talk about another theory that I came across that I found to be very interesting. Characters like 韓 and 幹 have been reconstructed as /*[ɡ]ˤar/ and /*[k]ˤar-s/ for Old Chinese. It was common for Chinese representations of Old Korean to use one character for disyllabic words, and it was likely that these characters were meant to record Korean karV. This would have it be likely related to Kara, the historical name of the Gaya Confederacy. Kara means "Korea/China/Mainland East Asia" in Japanese and was also represented with the character 韓, and is derived from the Korean peninsula. Many early Korean polities had names which ended in "ra", including Gaya (Kara), Silla, Baekje (also known as Kudara), Tara (a small state in Gaya), and even Tamna (old name of Jeju, though Alexander Vovin suggests a Japonic origin for Tamna). From what I've read recently, 하다〮 (hàtá, from which han for "big" derives) is not attested in Old Korean and words like "hanabi" and "hanbat" are not attested until Middle Korean.

I’m more confused that the background music is a western Christmas Carol ( oh little town of bethlehem) on a video about east asia made in august lol

Woah, the pronouciation for Chinese Han and Korean Han is literally reversed in Vietnamese. We call korean Hàn and Han chinese Hán

韓 and 漢 are pronounced differently in Middle Chinese and Mandarin. In Mandarin they differ in tones 漢hàn and 韓hán。 In middle Chinese and Wu Chineze which kept its voiced consonants from Middle Chinede 韓is gheen and 漢is heen ， gh is like the soft g sound in Germanic languages or r sound in French. You can clearly see their difference.

In colloquial korean language, you cannot distinguish Chinese Han from Korean Han unless the Chinese characters are given for explanation. But we rarely get confused since the vocabulary evolved in the way we can distinguish them. For example Hanminjok(Han people) is always Korean, but Hanjok(Han folk) refers to the Chinese(thouh this term does not include other minorities but the mainland Han.)

In Vietnamese Chinese are “Hán” meanwhile Koreans are “Hàn”.

Short answer: it's just a coincidence.

Very interesting and well-presented. Just a small correction: if two words have different tones, they are, by definition, not homonyms; homonyms are words that are pronounced exactly alike. If they are just 'kinda similar', you could call them 'paronyms'. In languages that have lexical tones, the tones do count as a 'real' part of the word's pronunciation, just like consonants and vowels do. However, if it's true that Chinese people do tend to avoid using these words in the same contexts, that's interesting, because it might imply that even they feel the tone differences as somewhat less noticeable than the difference between vowels and between consonants.

That is a great explanation. A+ work. I’ve always wondered about that. I asked Koreans and Chinese people about that but nobody could give me any explanations.

Chinese: "Han!" Korean: "Han!" Japanese: "Kan!" Chinese and Korean: "....." Japanese: what? Japan has been kicked from the server

Also do not forget that the Koreans of the DPRK call themselves the people of Joseon or Choson. Awesome video nonetheless!

There is a state that is called Hann韩 (double n in romanization so its not confused with Han汉) during the warring state period which are also not related to Korean. Some of the well known people from the state is Han Feizi which was the prince as well as a philosopher of the school of legalism. The state later surrendered to Qin during the unification war.

It sounds a bit like what happens with Switzerland and Sweden. In many languages the names have been adapted to very similar words, even in English Swiss and Swede can be quite confusing, even though there is etymological connection.

I'm glad they stopped using "幹".😁

In fact, ‘’汉，漢，Han’’ originally meant grand and infinite. In the Three Kingdoms period, the "Han" in Cao Cao's poems "星汉灿烂" represented the meaning of boundlessness and grandeur of galaxy. Also，The name of the river ‘汉水，Han water’ was originally named because people at the time believed that the river corresponds to the galaxy.

Thank you for this one! This has been one of the biggest questions I had ever since I started learning Chinese. It felt so awkward to tell everyone that I'm learning 汉语 and 韩语 at the same time hahaha. So, in order to avoid the confusion, I would just say something like 汉语/中文 for Chinese language while 韩国语 for Korean language

Bringing up the relationship of these two words 韓，漢 with the word Khan (汗) is a very interesting and insightful touch!

ohohoh im seeing a great channel on the rise here! keep up the good work, love it.

In Japanese both 韓 (for Korea) and 漢 (for Han) are pronounced "kan", for example 韓国 (Kankoku - (South) Korea) and 漢字 (kanji - Chinese character).

I was literally asking this in a Korean lesson yesterday!! Wtf. Great explanation and video. Subscribed :)