Hangul syllable 희

Its word or name supplies the meaning. 희 is a Korean syllable, not a word with one fixed translation. 희망 means “hope” and uses the Hanja 希; 유희 means “play” and uses Hanja 戲. Hanja are Chinese-derived characters used to write some Korean words.

In standard Korean, 희 in words written with Hanja is pronounced like 히, roughly “hee” with a light h sound. Its spelling has ㅢ, so hearing it alone may not reveal whether it was written 희 or 히.

희 appears in Korean given names used across genders, such as 진희 and 희정. The syllable alone cannot identify a person’s gender or the Hanja chosen for the name.

How did 희 get this spelling?

It belongs to Hangul’s system for writing Korean speech. Hangul arranges letters into syllable blocks and was promulgated in 1446.

A late Middle Korean spelling of the Korean word for “root” contains 희. The shift from ㅟ to ㅢ became general in the 17th century; a later pronunciation shift from ㅢ toward ㅣ helps explain why 희 is read like 히 in words written with Hanja.

How do you type 희?

A Korean Hangul keyboard composes it from its letters. Switch to Hangul input and enter ㅎ followed by ㅢ; the input method forms 희 as a syllable block. On Windows, Microsoft’s Korean IME performs this composition automatically.

Unicode can store 희 as one precomposed syllable or as its two jamo (individual Hangul letters), ㅎ + ㅢ. Unicode normalization can convert between these forms without changing the text’s meaning.