Hangul Syllable Beh

By itself, 벻 is a Hangul syllable block, not a fixed word.

Its parts are initial ㅂ, vowel ㅔ, and final ㅎ. In Korean, that final consonant is batchim—the letter at the bottom of a syllable block. Unicode decomposes 벻 into the matching jamo ᄇ + ᅦ + ᇂ; jamo are Korean letters assembled into blocks.

The Unicode label “Beh” is built from those component names, not a Korean translation. For exact input, type ㅂ, then ㅔ, then ㅎ in a Korean IME; it assembles them as 벻.

Why was Hangul created?

Hangul was designed to give Korean speech its own learnable writing system.

The first record of Hunminjeongeum, Hangul’s original name, appears in the Annals of King Sejong, a chronicle of the king’s reign, in the twelfth lunar month of 1443. An explanatory book describing the letters’ design and use was published in 1446.

Before Hangul, Korean writers adapted Chinese characters in systems called idu, gugyeol, and hyangchal to write or interpret Korean speech. The script also went by jeongeum, eonmun, and banjeol; after the Gabo Reform of 1894, gukmun or gukseo became common names. Records use “Hangeul” in the early 1910s, and the name spread after the holiday was renamed Hangeulnal in 1928.