Choe Family History

Korean (Ch’oe): written 최 in Chinese characters 崔 meaning ‘high’ or ‘precipitous’. This is the only Chinese character for the surname Ch’oe. Of the 326 Ch’oe clans listed in some sources, only 43 distinct clans can be documented. The oldest Choi clan, the Kyŏngju Choi, was established some eight hundred years later by Choi Chi-wŏn (崔 致遠), a famous tenth-century Korean official.

Ch’oe is the fourth most common surname in Korea. The common Romanization Choi (see Choi) represents a French transliteration of the surname, which is actually pronounced more like Ch’wae.

The first Ch’oe Sobŏldori was one of the six elders of pre-Shilla Korea; he received his surname from the Shilla King Yuri Isagŭm in AD 3.

Chinese: variant Romanization of the surname 曹 see Cao Chinese: variant Romanization of the surname 徐 see Xu.